The man behind the Sandwich

Well, we’re joined by Adam Lisagor with Sandwich. It’s so cool, Adam, to see your face but not inside of YouTube or inside of a real TV, on like broadcast television, as I’ve seen you on multiple commercials during your career. Welcome to the Changelog.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s really exciting. And yeah, I used to be – there was a few years period where I was on every TV and every gym and sports bar as the TrueCar guy. I looked a little different than I do now, than how you’re seeing me now… But that was how most people in my life kind of knew that I was still alive for a bit…

[laughs] That’s how you keep in touch? “Oh, you’re still out there, doing stuff.”

Yeah.

That’s actually how I knew of you in the first place. I know of Sandwich, your company, Sandwich videos, a lot of technologists know, in the tech world… That’s how I knew of you. Not so much the TrueCar guy, but this well acted, but also quite dry humor actor, that was all for the company owner, and the producer, and the director… It’s how many things can you do so well, you know?

Oh, I appreciate that. It was a very confusing time, because especially early on, I would just get mistaken for the founder of whatever company I was shilling, often… Which could go really, really well…

Yeah, this can be nice, actually…

it could go really, really well if it’s like Square or Robinhood, but it can go really, really poorly if it’s like the coin card that everybody paid money for, and then just kind of [unintelligible 00:05:58.05]

Right… So it all started for you, I think it was the – it was around the time that the iPhone came out. I mean, at least what I’m remembering, and being like “What are these videos?” Because there was an app, and I think maybe you were part of this one, or maybe you were just helping represent it. The one where you would write a tweet before you would tweet, someone like this.

Yeah, exactly. It was called Birdhouse, and that was actually my app. Before my video company was started, I thought I was going to be making apps. I was transitioning from my old life in the visual effects world as an editor and compositor, into my new life as a software developer. And I tried to learn Objective-C at the time; I read some books. The guy I was working on this stuff with also went from zero… And he just like – he was young and smarter than me, so he took it up really quickly. I became the creative director, and he became the engineer, and it was a nice relationship. So it was where I kind of found my footing as a creative director for software, which is – it’s kind of an interesting concept. That’s what John Gruber called himself when he made that app; he made a note-taking app many years ago…

Right. It was named after some sort of alcohol, or a drink, or something…

Yeah, I want to say Absinth, but that wasn’t it. [laughter] It doesn’t exist anymore, does it? It was like Vespertine, or something, but…

Vesper. I think it was called Vesper.

Vesper. Yeah, that’s it. But he called himself the creative director of that software. And I think it’s fitting. I’m of this mind right now that all media is becoming tech, and the lines between tech and media are very, very blurred. So it’s actually a benefit, the benefit of people in both realms that we sort of can cross over into the other. I think that as traditional media is sort of not thriving right now, my hope is that a lot of those people can sort of pick up the skills to operate in a tech context.

[08:05] Explain that? The tech aspect that you just shared. Give us a bit more to what you mean.

Yeah. So my premise behind this or the thesis is that film production getting a lot of people together, sometimes hundreds, to shoot something and commit it to film - film in the abstract - and then put it together so it’s entertaining and beautiful for an audience, is one of the hardest things that you can possibly do. And I think people outside our world don’t necessarily know that. It’s like architecture, but in real time. 100 high mission-critical decisions have to be made very quickly. And they’re linear, so one thing can’t happen until the last thing was done. And so you’ve got scores of people that are operating based on this sort of framework that has existed for decades or a century, of hierarchy, position, process. And it’s an API that you plug in. If you are a second AC on a job, you already come to it – even if you’re day playing, you come to it knowing exactly what a second AC does, just like a function. So you step in, you plug yourself in, you do the job you’re supposed to do without error, because if you make an error, it screws everybody else up… And then you get through to the end of the day, or the end of the project. And that is so hard and process-intensive, in ways that people don’t necessarily appreciate… But the process of that is actually sort of sadly kind of diminishing, and the industry is diminishing a little bit right now.

And so all these smart, talented people that have learned all these skills and all this process, and do it with like a really high degree of accuracy - their skills aren’t going to be needed. So I’m just kind of putting two and two together. I hope that a lot of them can find their way natively into the tech world, because I think there’s opportunity there for them. It might be specious, I don’t know.

Mm-hm. Certainly where the budgets have been, . I mean, one of the things that I thought was really cool about your story was after the Birdhouse video blew up - I’m not sure if the app blew up, but the video was very popular… I think Jack Dorsey came along, hired you, some other people… Suddenly, there was a point where a Sandwich video almost seemed like it was compulsory or required to have a successful tech startup. I mean, it was probably on people’s pitch decks “What are you gonna do with the money?” It’s like “Well, Sandwich video, and then we don’t know what else.” And congratulations on that. But that was like a thing for a while. And - I mean, you earned it. The videos are spectacular. I just watched the Slack one from a while back just today, and I was “Very compelling.” I mean, punchy, entertaining, funny, but also very well describes Slack’s advantages over what everybody else was doing… Which was email, or Skype, or just random stuff.

And the budgets were there in tech for a long time. Of course, things have started to change a little bit. Big tech still has the money, small tech doesn’t have quite as much money today as it did. But are you saying that this industry the film, or that industry is diminishing - is that budgetary? Is that interest? in which ways is it diminishing? Are you hoping that tech brings the budget back to video?

I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to happen until this wave sort of matures a little bit more. I think we’re at the beginning of the new tech wave, in sort of build mode, where there aren’t a lot of budgets or resources, so belts are tighter.

I’ve been doing it for 15 years, so I’ve watched the cycle kind of happen a few times. Towards the end of those cycles, the budgets expand and we’re flushed with resources to play with big toys.

Right.

That’s when it gets boring, actually, in tech. And it’s most interesting right now, when there aren’t really resources. And after having gone through this cycle a few times, I realized where I want to be is in product. I want to be building. I don’t want to be at the mercy of the industry over and over again, at the mercy of capital.

[12:17] But there’s a few things you identified. Yes, it was a good place to be in early on, when everybody wanted the thing, the asset, the Sandwich video. And I guess like after having done it for so long, what I’ve realized is there’s value – most of the value is upfront, at the conceptualization phase, because most of what a startup can’t figure out for themselves is how to tell the story.

The filmmaking is execution. There’s always going to be filmmakers around to help do that. And there are millions of them, and they’re great. But the value of helping frame the story is more scarce. Regardless of whether I’m doing it in a production filmmaking context, or consulting or whatever, I can still be around to do that. I really like doing it. I love sitting down with a founder and saying “What are you working on?”, and understanding it on a technical level, and then translating that into the value for users. And that’s kind of like why I’m doing it myself now, for my own thing.

There’s a lot of value in that. It’s taking complex things and making them simple, in a way.

Exactly.

It’s like, you’ve got this complex story… And it’s all about packaging and concepts, simplification in a lot of cases, condensing, compression… More buzzwords, of course. But you’re right, that’s really the funnest part, it’s the ability to help someone share their story in a way that really is compelling. That really does get attention. That really does not just simply tell their facts and tell their basic story, but the true essence of the story; that matters most, and I think you’ve done a great job of being able to reproduce that again and again and again.

I appreciate that.

At the risk of putting all the, I guess accolades and attention on simple you, how much of that was you and how much of that was just your ability to also find the right people to help you with Sandwich?

That’s a great question. Well, the team is incredibly important, of course. And in our team, I’ve had some of the same people around for – I mean, the longest one has been with me for 13 years, but a couple people for a decade… And people tend to stick around because we’re a machine that works well, and we’ve got all of our processes kind of like institutionalized. And they’re repeatable, so there’s a lot less waste than there used to be. And when there’s less waste, it’s just a more fun job to do. That’s just the way it works.

Right.

So the machine is going to keep running. The client base also makes it a good job to have… Again, because we’ve been in that position of like being a scarce asset that a lot of people identified as valuable, we were in a position to self-select. To select our client base early on. And you know, I hope it’s just – like, you want to take on the projects you want to work on. That’s just kind of how it is. It’s like casting an – you know, I’m always with the metaphors, but… If you’re making a movie, you want to cast the actors that are your partners, that are going to represent the story well. Our products, in the videos that we make at Sandwich, the product is like an actor; it’s like a character. So we need to be working with the best product in order to tell the best story.

So some of it is out of necessity. If we get an inquiry from a company that’s working on something that’s not that interesting, and I see that it’s gonna be a slog to tell the story, and then on the other side of it not actually provide that much value, that’s one that I probably would have less motivation to participate in.

[15:52] Yeah, because your brand’s on the line, too. Every video is a representation of what Sandwich is capable of, really. And a one-off video, or one thing that’s like off-brand, it’s like “Well, that was not a Sandwich video. I mean, I see all the right people in there, I see the right kind of coloring, and framing, and angles or whatever… But that wasn’t a good story.”

Isn’t that weird, how that happens? I love that you said it too, because it definitely happens. I don’t know if you guys are Arrested Development fans, but Arrested Development seasons four and five are the perfect example of that. For whatever reason, all of the elements, all the same elements were there, but it just didn’t come together.

It couldn’t capture it again.

Yeah.

Yeah. Almost intangible. So many thoughts around that… Going back to the process and the streamline, like the well oiled machine… Of course, everybody wants to work there. But as a creative person, there’s something – I wanna say constrained about that, but I guess maybe boring to a certain extent… Like, when you’re trying to create entertainment, plus sales, plus… All the things, right? …aren’t formulas the worst? I mean, I’m sure at a certain point you could tell us the formula for a compelling two-minute thing. But isn’t that boring, and –

To be honest, no. And that’s what keeps it fresh, is there is no formula, if you asked me.

What about ingredients? Are there ingredients?

Not really ingredients, but principles. I think there’s a difference. Ingredients would be things like make sure to have the actor stand in the center of the frame, make sure that they show the product within the first five seconds… That kind of thing. Those are ingredients. But principles are things like “Signal to the audience that you care about their time. And respect their intelligence.” And there’s a big difference between those two things.

And there’s tons of ways of doing that.

Yeah. Most smaller video companies probably work from a standpoint of ingredients more. And we operate Sandwich as a creative product more. I don’t know, it’s a framework, but nothing is repeatable, and that’s – sorry, everything is repeatable, but nothing is formulaic, or systematized in that way. So that’s the most fun part of the job, actually, is get on a new call, a new intro with a founder, and I say “Tell me what you’re working on”, and it’s always going to be a new thing.

And there’s bits and pieces. I can always recombine from the past experiences, of “Oh, this reminds me of this plus this.” Even today, we were working on a script that was like “Oh, this is like a combination of–” We did something for an app called Broadcast News early on, that was MSNBC did a news app; this commercial. So it was like “Oh, this is like Broadcast News mixed with Mighty.” And when you can call back from a portfolio of 900 projects that you’ve done, then it’s easy to [unintelligible 00:18:57.29] bits and pieces of each, as bread crumbs. But they’re not intentionally mixed and matched. It’s just like, it happens.

Yeah, organically.

Yeah.

That must be challenging, too. I’ve had many conversations with founders, in many respects - through podcasts, our ad spots include founders, in a lot of cases; the way we produce our ad spots are very, I would say, in the narrative realm, versus simply tell the facts and figures and hope they go and sign. It’s more like “What is your story? What hard problem are you trying to solve? How are you actually helping developers get along or get further, or products be better?” But there’s times that I’m a little let down by their ability to communicate their story… And it’s really kind of sad whenever they just can’t. And I’m like “Wow, how are you so good at this, but then you can’t tell your story?” Or it’s even still coming together. And it’s like “Well, I really just want to tell you you’re premature. You should like go away and come back a few months from now, because you’re kinda kind of wasting your money.”

Yeah.

[20:03] How do you feel about that? Whenever you get called into that. Maybe you’re excited, but that initial call with that founder, it may be new and unique every time, but you’re met with, to some degree, some version of excitement or even disappointment.

Yeah, that’s such a great question, and I love the framing of it. And in your context, it makes so much sense. I think for those founders that feel like they’re not able to do that thing yet, they should either bring in somebody who can, or they should get a lot of coaching or something. They should just work with somebody who has a gift for storytelling, so they can sort of get a feel for it. Just like a dance lesson, or something. Some people are definitely more natural at it, have the instinct for it.

I feel like probably statistically, more of the founders that I talk to, even the early stage ones, have that ability to tell the story a little bit better. Sometimes you can feel that it’s been calcified. And this happens to anybody working on anything for a long time, is you just, you start going through the motions. By rote, you forget what the actual principles were that drive the story, that fueled the story, and you just start saying the story, as a structure… Which is bad, but I feel like they’ve all kind of cracked – if they’re working on something good, then the story kind of has a way of telling itself.

Sometimes the story, it feels like it’s the wrong story. And especially this happens with later stage companies, where they’ve brought in a team to sort of build up the infrastructure for their brand story or their product story, and they’ve gone in the wrong direction. That sucks when that happens; when there’s 10 people on a call, and they’re all so invested on this story that they’ve spent six months, and maybe hired an agency to build up… And it feels like it’s the wrong story. And then I step in from the outside, some snot-nosed lone – what do you call it?

Hired gun.

Lone wolf kind of – yeah, hired gun. And I say “Guys, I don’t think–” And I don’t actually say it, because we’ll definitely lose the job… [laughter]

I was gonna ask you, do you actually say it?

But sometimes it’s like making subtle suggestions. You know, like “I hear you saying these words, but to me it creates a misdirect in my mind, and now I’m misunderstanding the story that you’re telling. What if we do this?” And sometimes they’ll take the suggestion. It’s very rare that they’ll actually take it and like institutionalize it, and change their direction, because they’re so fully invested in what they’ve –

Sunk costs.

Yeah, totally. Sunk costs, exactly.

I just had a conversation yesterday; literally, what you described just now happened to me. I had an amazing fire call. It was awesome. And then at the end, I’m like “That was amazing. Thank you so much for your time. That was just fantastic. However, your homepage and everything you see out there says none of what you just said. What you just said was amazing. If that is your story, then your homepage, and your marketing, and everything else that shares your brand and your initiative and your story and whatever is not communicating that. What’s happening there?”

And I just said to him, I’m like “If you don’t figure out how to market yourself, you’re gonna be the best less known thing out there.” And I’m not gonna say any names, because I don’t want to point them out, but… He was very receptive to it. And it’s not that they’re so wrong or so off. It’s just like, “Wow, that conversation was good. Everything you said was amazing. But that’s missing in your real marketing, in your real story that you have out there elsewhere.” And he was just like “We’re changing.”

And you kind of have to feel for them, because they’re on the right path, but it’s iterative. We as software developers and software makers really believe in that phrase, or that word, iterative. It’s like part of our core. But everyone else out in the world does not really understand, in my opinion, very well, like we do. It’s part of our DNA, this idea of iteration and the benefits of iteration. Almost no one else gets that.

[24:02] That’s so true. And you find that in the tech industry, you find it also in the media industry. And it’s one of the principles that I try to reinforce in my own company, that we have to be iterative, in a process that’s traditionally not that iterative. Usually, everything is very process-oriented in film production, where you have to lock the script in order to move on to pre-production. You have to lock all of the assets in pre-production. And then if you change anything along that flow, you’re really screwing people up. You might be wasting your resources.

But then you’ve got another style of doing all this process, which is very iterative. And you’ve got – I mean, you can call out filmmaker names that do this incredibly well, and you can tell that they’re almost like making it up on the spot based on what feels right… Which is definitely an iterative style of doing any work. And often, what does that mean? It means shorter feedback, shorter loops, and more responsiveness. And you’re making decisions in the moment, that are based on real-time feedback to that moment, not decisions that were made three months ago. And that’s the way to do great work, in my opinion. It’s just that when you’re working with so many resources - and as I said, in film production, mission-critical… You know, we only have one truck-full of props, and it’s only got a certain set of props in it. Therefore we can’t really mix too much stuff up on the fly, because our resources are limited. But there’s kind of ways of doing both, I think. And probably in both – I mean, you guys would be able to speak better to like mapping the metaphor together to the tech world and the development world… What are the decisions that you needed to have made three months ago, that lead to a decision that needs to be made today, when you’re building a product, for instance?

Good question. So much in software is malleable. So there’s so many things that you can back out of relatively easy. And now, there may be like specific technology choices that you make, data structures can come back to bite you later, or cause you to make a different decision down the line… But man, we iterate a lot, and we try to take small steps. And so you’re never making a one big leap, you’re making 5,000 little steps. So that’s just flexible and awesome. And there are moments in time where maybe you actually go to production, and like “Now we have a version 1.0”, and it’s like there are certain things we’re locked into until we break changes and move on to version two. But for now, we’re locked into these particular decisions that we’ve made. Of course, backwards compatibility is one of those things, where it’s like, we are stuck to our past decisions. But until you go 1.0, or until you ship to the app store, it’s so easy to iterate and change, and just move on the fly, because it’s all just bits.

Yeah, that’s true. And that can be a difficult thing about working with clients in tech, is that they expect like a post-production process to be closer to what a tech process is going to be… Which it’s often not. With post-production you can’t undo a lot of decisions, so you can’t be quite as iterative. So we’ve got these founders that are maybe like technical founders, and they have a new idea to throw out, and they don’t realize that undoes the last week of work that we did, on accident.

[laughs] Right. Or the video’s already been uploaded to YouTube, and they find that they want to make a change, and you’re like “You actually can’t. They won’t let you re-upload. You’ll have to delete it and upload a new one.”

Argh, YouTube…!

Oh, I know…

Break: [27:42]

So have you ever gone down a path? I mean, you said 900 projects, tons of successes. I’m sure there’s been failures along the way… Nobody bats 1,000. But anything in particular - not to name names, but has there been times where you’ve met with the founder, “What are you working on?” “I’m excited”, things go down, and then eventually they fall apart, and nothing that nothing comes of it. And how far down that path have you been with people?

That’s a really great question. Yes, it happens. We have failures. We just had one in the last few months that I won’t name, but it’s a sad – it’s a little bit of a sad story. It’s a SaaS design platform that we all know… And they hired us to do a video, and they kind of had in their mind what kind of video to do. So we executed on the highest level per that brief. And then we all kind of found out together, having gone through the whole journey from start to finish, that maybe that wasn’t the right brief to execute on. We should have probably rethought it differently from the start. And the end result of that is that nobody will ever see that work, because it just didn’t tell the right story for this company.

And you didn’t know till the very end.

I mean, to be honest with you, I think the work turned out great… [laughter]

Or your customer didn’t know till the very end…

Yeah… Literally, I messaged the founder and said – you know, when we delivered the final cut, and I said “Thank you so much for bringing us onto this. I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out.” I was really excited for people to see it. And he said “Yeah, it was a fun process. We learned so much from you. We’re not going to be able to show this. We’ve decided to shelve it, because it kind of says – it tells a story that the brand doesn’t really want to be telling right now.”

Wow… Ouch.

You know, it happens. And the thing is that early on in my career – okay, this happened for Quora, actually. One of my first 10 videos was a launch video for Quora. I had actually gotten in touch with them, with the founders, and said “Hey, I’m this new hotshot in town. I make videos. Maybe you’ve heard of Square. Can I make you a video?” And they said “Sure, I guess – yeah, we have some funding.” And then I made them the video. It was really hard video to make. It turned out cool. And then three weeks after sending it, they got back to me and said “Yeah, we’re not going to be using this, but thank you for your time.” They paid for it, whatever; it doesn’t matter. When that kind of failure happens and you’ve only got 10 projects as a body of work, it really hurts. It really, really stings; 1 out of 10. When it’s one out of this many ,hundreds, it stings less. And we weren’t at fault. Accountability is –

Yeah, that makes it a little better, right?

Yeah, a little bit. But yeah, there’s failures. We all fail.

What kind of checks do you have in place to potentially prevent that?

It’s a gut, and a lot of it comes from – I would say, as the person who’s mostly responsible for the output of the company, I’m the one who has to be constantly checking in with the process, and saying “Is this going to be providing the most value to this company that’s paid us to do the work? Is the audience going to receive this as we had intended?” And if not, then how do we fix it? How do we adjust or iterate? And we do actually do quite a bit of that adjustment and iteration. It’s very rare that there’s a one to one throughline between your original intention and the final result. Very rare. Sometimes it happens, and it’s a beautiful thing.

It’s especially sad when you get to the end… Sometimes the process is the product, in a way, even for them. These versions where they don’t ship it. Like you had said, “I learned so much. Thank you so much.” I’m curious if they came back and hired you again when they got their stuff together, basically… But sometimes you can’t help them until you go through the hard work. And sometimes it is telling the wrong story, so that they can learn what the right story is. And hopefully, they come back to you and say “Hey, Adam, can you do that again, but with the right brief, or the right story?”

Well, we’ve done that a few times, actually, and it’s an incredible thing. But what you’ve just encapsulated was so perfect, about the difference between good client services and bad client services… It’s that client services is part of the product that you’re selling. Like, whether the client believes that you went through a good process, even if the result wasn’t awesome.

[36:00] And it’s happened a few times where - and I’ll give you an example. Mixpanel. They were already a huge platform when they came to us, and they hired us, we did – it was during a time when I was overwhelmed by too many projects and stuff, so I couldn’t dedicate my focus to everything. And I figured “Oh, this is kind of like – it’s a very technical SaaS platform for developers.” Not necessarily something I needed to devote all my creative attention to. And the video, the first version of the video that we made for it was absolute crap. Just like – you would never believe that it was Sandwich that made it. And the director was this very, very talented feature filmmaker, who’s recently made a film, a horror film that a lot of people saw. And he directed this thing, because sometimes feature filmmakers do commercial work, and it’s fun for them… So the video turned out crap, and then the client said “This isn’t great. We’re not going to use it.” But to his credit - so hail the founder - came back and said “So how can we do this again, and make it good this time?” And we did. We came back and we made a better one, much better. And I was more focused on it; it turned out great. We’ve worked with that founder multiple times since, on his different companies. We’re working with him right now.

It happened on QuizUp also. QuizUp was like a fun quiz app for iOS. The first video we made for them was super-fun, delightful, but ultimately not that good. It told the wrong story. They didn’t love it. And they said, “How can we do this again?” And we did it again, and it turned out great the second time. And that’s just a matter of like that trust. Yeah, I guess you’ve engendered that trust with your client, for them to say “Okay, it was good. We learned a lot. This is iterative, and now we’re doing it version two instead.”

Yeah. I find that consensus, as best you can get to it, is what establishes trust, to some degree. It’s the baseline. Like, if you think you got their story, and you just go in your own marching orders with no consensus on what those marching orders are, and you create, and it’s wrong… Not that they have to bless every motion you take, but some version of a source of truth of what is the mission, what are we trying to actually accomplish, what is the goal, so that it’s a shared consensus direction… Versus like “Hey, we’re the smart people, we’re the creatives over here. Let us do our work and leave us alone. Just tell us what you need to.” I find that personally consensus is like my silver bullet to like not failing. I mean, I can still fail story-wise, or fail in other ways, but I haven’t failed the process of what the goal really is. Because if they’re not involved, they also don’t collaborate or can’t collaborate. And then it’s just you lone-wolfing, like you said before, doing what you want. And that’s not the point. The point is the collaboration. The point is getting out of them what they can give you, so that you can distill and can create the concept and can repackage their story in a way that is truly interesting.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s visibility. Consensus is a perfect keyword. Visibility, transparency, and inclusion in the process… And luckily, the tech and the pipelines have the ability to give us that. We can collaborate in different ways in ways that we didn’t use to be able to. Old school agency model was you step away for six weeks, and then you come and you do a big presentation in a boardroom, and they react in the room, and then you take their notes, and you go back for another six weeks. That’s just not sustainable at all. It’s a bad way to work. And now, we are in Slack channels with our clients on almost every job. We’re always telling them “This is the process. This is the decision we’ve just made. What do you think? Any input?” And I love that way of working, I really do.

It’s scary, though. Ain’t it scary to be like that, to be that vulnerable?

And it’s risky.

[40:08] Risky. I was thinking, a little fear, because like, you’ve always got your creative heart on some version of a sleeve, even if you don’t take it personally, because it’s like, you’re kind of always just out there with the truth, you know? I mean, which is fine, except for like it puts you in the – and the ability to say yes, or no, or “That’s not good.” I suppose that’s good feedback, but it’s kind of scary, to be that vulnerable.

It is. It causes us to be more mindful about our reactions in real time, though. And I’m gonna lay it out on the line for you… Last week I had a bad day. And I got testy with a client in a Slack channel, in a way that – I got so reactive to the input that it caused me to communicate badly. And the next day I was writing apologies. And having done this for so long, and promised myself that I’m not gonna let any of it get to me, because it’s just… It’s just not worth it. It’s just commercials. Who cares. But still, on a bad day, if you catch me in the wrong place, I’m going to have a sharp, bitey reaction to something, and I’m going to communicate poorly. So I guess the takeaway here is just if you’re going to expose yourself in that way in a Slack channel, and be always open for that feedback loop, you’ve got to be mindful about the way you communicate in order to capture all the value from it.

Let me give you one piece of advice then… And this is something I tell myself, and that’s why I’m gonna give it to you.

Please.

I learned from a friend of mine who’s a clinical psychologist, she’s a doctor in clinical psychology, and she taught me about this method called 10/10/10. And so if you’re triggered, or if you’re hungry, or if you just have some version you think you should react, do your best to employ 10/10/10. It could be 10 seconds… Some way to put in time, inject time. That’s why even in an unsafe scenario a police officer pulling over somebody, and they have a reaction, they’re trying to buy time. Same thing here - just buy yourself time, so that your frontal lobe can catch up with your non-frontal lobe, basically. What is truly a rational way to respond here, “It is just commercials. These are my principles. This is how I react to my clients. Does all of this line up? Okay, no. Let me put in 10 seconds, let me put in 10 minutes, let me put in 10 hours, potentially.” Some way to inject a buffer of time before your next reaction.

Such a great lesson. I love it. I’m going to take it.

I think Daniel Tiger also teaches us that, doesn’t he?

Oh, yeah.

[laughs]

If you’re feeling mad and you’re about to roar, take a deep breath and count to four…

When you feel so mad, and you want to roar… Take a deep breath, and… Count to four!

Count to four. There you go.

[laughs] That’s so great. All this stuff comes from the book of Mr. Rogers, doesn’t it?

Exactly.

Ah, he’s so good.

The guy had a lot figured out. He had a lot figured out. Well, another thing I wanted to ask you about, if you put your business hat, or keep it on - I don’t know if it’s on yet, or if you want to keep it on - is I read about in Wikipedia (so fact-check this) that in lieu of cash payments you’ve taken a lot of equity, rev shares… You know, basically getting your skin in the game for a lot of these. First of all, is that true?

It is very true. Yeah.

Okay. I thought it was, but… I don’t trust my sources all the time. Then my question is, looking back over the course of Sandwich for 15 years, however long it’s been - has that been a big win for you? Has it been more of a headache than it’s worth? Have you lost money/made money? Do you still do it? What’s your big picture takeaway on that as a concept?

Yeah, I still love it as a concept. It’s the thing that signaled to me early on that the way to build value and wealth ultimately is to participate in growth that way, not on a services for hire basis. Basically, if you want to get wealthy, own equity in something.

[43:59] Right. Now, do you do this with the ones you really believe in? Is that the ones that don’t have cash? Is it ad hoc? Is it everybody? How do you figure it out?

No, certainly it’s rare, and I try to identify the ones with the growth potential to participate in, where they’re not desperate to save the money, and therefore “We can only pay in equity.” Because usually –

Only when they can afford it. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s really striking that right balance of they’re early enough that there’s still room on their cap table, but they’ve got enough resources that they’re not expecting a video for free. So a good ratio is like 75% cash, 25% equity, and then basically I’m foregoing – I’m going a little bit out of pocket and I’m foregoing all of our profit margin. Basically, it can end up as a breakeven, close to a breakeven for me in terms of hard costs. And then if they do well, I have all that upside.

So it was a model that proved out pretty early in small ways, and then there have been a couple that proved out in bigger ways. And it’s the reason, to be honest, that I identified within the last few years, that I want to be in the growth business. Owning a creative studio is not that; even if you get acquired, it’s not a high-growth acquisition.

So I decided, not just because of money, but I really like the idea of building something that scales… And I’m not scalable by myself as as a creative director. My team isn’t scalable. We could add 10 more people to the team, and that’s not the kind of scale that I’m talking about. But software’s scalable, as we all know.

So it makes sense if you want to be a) scalable, and then b) 100% bought into the idea, versus having a founder – you’re a proxy for the founder, in many of these cases. You can make your own damn videos for your own damn products, right? So what are you working on then? What kind of stuff – I know we want to talk about your vision projects, you have some AI stuff going on… What’s exciting to you right now?

Well, thank you. I mean, I’m really flattered that you asked and that you’re interested. And that I’m even here, really. So what am I working on? The startup that I’ve been building with my co-founder, Beamer Wilkins, for the last year, who is a listener of your show…

Whaddup, Beamer?

Hello, Beamer! So that’s a that’s an AI startup. It’s a productivity platform. It’s based on the premise that a lot of people don’t use AI because they don’t think it’s useful to them. But for me, the toolset that I use in AI, which is a very carefully curated tool set, and a very manual set of processes, have 10x-ed my capacity in 100 different ways for increasing my interesting thought, my learning, my productivity.

So we’ve built up this framework that’s based on the way that I work with these tools, so that they can be accessible to a lot of people. Because I want everybody in my life to be using a very cool, comfortable, easy tool, that makes AI useful to them. Like, I’m so excited about AI, and I love to have the conversations about it. And one of the big reasons is I think that AI provides resource to people that they otherwise don’t have. And that resource can be interpreted in a million different ways; whatever that means to you, whether it’s an ear to listen to you, a research assistant, a thought partner, like I said, a coach… I mean, those are all four of the main pillars on the spectrum from soft skills, like friend, to hard skills like data. That resource is something that’s going to make us feel a little bit safer in the world, a little bit more protected. Have a stronger foundation. And whatever that resource means to the user, if that translates to them feeling even a modicum more safe and grounded in this world than they otherwise would, then the net gain for society is massive. That’s my whole theory.

[48:14] When I started the project a year ago, we set out to sort of improve processes at my own studio, so work was easier for us to do at Sandwich. And then I quickly realized, “Oh, these processes aren’t just specific to a creative studio. These are processes that are for doing any kind of work, on a personal to business spectrum.” So we started building up product in that way. And that’s when it got really exciting for me, to think “Wait a second, this is an easy way for anybody to kind of use this framework as a method of feeling more useful in the world.” Yeah, it makes me feel good, so I want others to feel good, too.

And what’s it called? Is there a domain? Can we look at it yet?

Is there a video?

[laughs] Yeah, good one.

Sure. This is the first time I’ve ever said the name out loud…

Oh, cool.

…but it’s called Useful. So yeah, I won’t share a domain yet, but…

Useful.ai?

[laughs]

No, it’s –

We’re gonna go guessing every TLD…

Yeah, no, of course…

[unintelligible 00:49:16.24]

I’ll see what’s up. I’ll see what’s up on the –

Useful. I like that. One word, two syllables…

Yeah. It says what it is. You know what? It’s useful.computer. The company’s called Useful Computer, so that’s where the domain is going to be. It’s a bad landing page right now, that Beamer is supposed to be a updating today. He said he’s gonna do it after lunch, but… We do have a very strong –

Get to work on it, Beamer. You’ve got one week from this recording…

[laughs] Okay, good. I’ll tell him that. It’s good to have a deadline.

There you go.

Yeah, we’re out there about to pitch for a seed round.

Okay. So how does this feel good manifest? I mean, what does it look like? What’s it gonna look like?

The product?

Yeah, you were speaking about ideas and principles, which all sound great; making everybody a little bit more productive, a little bit more empowered, all this… What does it actually manifest as?

Yeah, a productivity tool for letting you capture your context, and help guide you into productive action and insight. Stuff like that. It’s hard to describe something like this without using words –

A visual. Yeah. [laughter]

It’s hard to describe lots of things without words.

You know, the words are always so distracting, because every word just touches off some association in the listener’s brain, that steers them in a potentially different direction… Or just words sound crude; words sound like startup fluff. You have to define the product, though; that’s the thing that I’ve learned, is you can’t just talk in abstractions, so you actually have to say what the thing is… But yeah, happy to share a demo with you as soon as we’re out there. It would be really exciting for me too, actually.

Yeah, that’d be fun.

Well, the number one threat to action is blank page, obviously. Right? Or just feeling intimidated, overwhelmed, inadequate… All the adjectives that sort of describe that feeling. Is that sort of the crux of what you begin with, is like “Hey, let me just take whatever that context is”? It could be a document, it could be whatever… And just kind of give you some waypoints to what a good next action might be? Is that where you’re landing at?

100,000% what you just said.

Oh, my gosh, okay. I love that, because I feel like that’s what I love most about what at least textual generative AI has given to the world in the last year and a half… It has kind of removed – actually, I would say it’s manufactured confidence. And confidence is memory of past success.

[51:52] So you don’t always have memory of past success unless you have experience. But if you’ve got a buddy, like you said, or a friend, or a coach, or someone who believes in you when you can’t believe in yourself, that’s what a lot of people really need. And defining something that does that kind of thing… I think ChatGPT does that, but maybe not in its literal being; it provides that, but it’s not the only way you can get to that, I guess. So if you’re building a version of that that is laser-focused on that confidence builder… Which unlocks so much. There’s so many people who don’t do anything because they feel scared, inadequate, alone even. Whereas if you just had a buddy, even if it was the wrong direction… Like your past videos that may have failed. They didn’t land on the story. Well, hey, it at least gave us food for thought for the next time. And there will be a next time.

That’s right. And yeah, a lot of people’s first experiences, or the informing experiences of AI is that they input something, it reflected something inaccurate back to them, and that signaled a total lack of confidence, rather than the opposite. It didn’t reflect anything strong or true back to them, and so they said “Oh, this isn’t good. No, thank you.”

Bail. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And they bail. And the thing about these tools is that the more context you give it, the better reflection it’s going to give back to you. And the models are very, very good at organizing information and reflecting it back in an accurate way. It’s a cliche, but “Good in, good out”, of course. But just none of the tools are set up to be all of that rich in context yet for users. And so yeah, that blank page problem is a huge barrier for most people. They don’t even know what to ask necessarily. And this is not just a failure of people’s intelligence or imagination. This is a failure of the tools. I’ve seen some of the smartest people that I know completely clueless as to what to do when they sit in front of an LLM.

Yeah. Well, it was the first, I guess, wave of - I don’t know how to describe it, but… Prompt engineering. And I feel like what you can do with Useful is engineer the prompt so that the user doesn’t have to be so smart or so contextually accurate; the interface to the LLM, and how to ask the question, or how to prompt the thing to give it back the reflection… I think Reflection is kind of a cool name, too. If ever Useful doesn’t work, I think Reflection could be kind of cool, too.

Yeah, Reflection is great. I love that idea, of the mirror back to you. The LLM sort of tells the story back to you, that it’s understanding… And that can be the thing that self-perpetuates. That can be the confidence builder, or your buddy, as you said. The buddy – we all know that the best buddies are the – the hype people in our lives are the ones that say, “This is what I see in you. I see the best in you, and I’m going to tell you about it.” And then you’re like “Yeah, you know what? Yeah…! Yeah, that sounds right. That’s me.” But the saddest thing is that a lot of people don’t have that. A lot of people don’t have that. They have friends, of course, but the friends are not reflecting back at them in that way, because maybe it’s just not part of the relationship. If you don’t have that, you start to believe that it doesn’t exist. And that really sucks.

The challenge with some friends too is when you start to be successful, they have envy or jealousy, and they hold you back because you’re progressing and they’re not progressing, or they’re progressing less fast… And so they don’t give you what you really should get from a friend. And they can’t give it to you because of humanity, really. It’s not even their fault necessarily, it’s just… We’re humans.

It’s interesting how people treat that situation. I think a lot of people just make the assumption that you don’t need to hear it. Like, “You know you’re successful, therefore why do I need to tell you? Why would I need to reinforce it or reflect it back to you?” When the truth is even successful people need that reinforcement.

One of my love languages – I don’t know if I’ve ever said this on air, Jerod. I don’t know.

[56:05] Please do.

It’s words of affirmation. I don’t like to be praised necessarily, but it sure is nice to hear from the people that I trust, that are in my inner circle, that see my hard work, that see my attempts, even if they’re bad, towards the right direction, to affirm the direction I’m going. Because we live in our own bubbles in a lot of cases, especially in most cases as distributed workers who don’t have that real-time feedback from people. So for me, my love language – if you want to love me well - words of affirmation.

Well, that’s great. Two things. Number one, I think AI or LL’s are pretty suited to doing what you describe.

That’s a strange thing though, right? Ain’t that a strange thing though, to be loved by an LLM?

Does it feel the same coming from a computer?

Well, if you’re trusting that it’s a reflection of you, and not just a product of software… And this is a really interesting intellectual framing of what the technology is. The second thing I was gonna say, Adam, is that you’re really good at this. Like, you’re a really good interviewer, I’m really enjoying this conversation…

Well, thank you.

Jerod, you too. You guys make a great show. I’m just here as an active partner in the conversation, and I’m having a really great time. So I’m reflecting that back at you guys, because it’s worth saying.

Well, thank you for giving me words of affirmation, Adam. I thank you so much for that.

Those are very good words of affirmation.

You got it. You got it.

While we’re here on that, you’re an amazing interviewee.

Let’s find out if this is his love language first. Is this something that you love, Adam?

Is it? Yeah, do you like words of affirmation?

Oh, I love it so much. But I’ve steeled myself – I’ve steeled myself to not needing it, as much as I can. Because you don’t want that to be the thing that’s blocking you from moving forward, or being successful. But yeah, I still need it. Oh, my God.

Gosh. And when you’re in that moment and you can’t take action, the best thing you can do is take some action, right? If you’re scared, or you’re fearful, take one small steps toward the right direction and you got at least one good next step. Now, I think your story is super-cool. I’m geeked out early on, because I knew you from the TrueCar commercials, and you’ve done such a great job. It’s kind of weird and fascinating to meet somebody that I’ve seen, like Jerod said, on a TV; on broadcast TV, not just simply YouTube, which is cool, too. And I think a cool story – I’m super-interested in how you go from Creative Director, to software developer, to this next thing, which is like founding a company around AI, and you’re all in on it… And I think you have some really good ideas, because you’re in that creative world to unblock people. And everybody needs some version of getting unstuck, getting unblocked, and everybody is different… But mainly, you just need a buddy. I believe everybody needs a good buddy.

Yes. And I’ve been in a fortunate position that I’ve built up this studio where I have people working for me that I trust. Most people don’t have that. So most people don’t even know the idea of having one person that’s there doing a job, and their job is to reinforce you and increase your capacity. So it was already like modeled for me, what the feeling is of having a multiplier of yourself. So that’s why it kind of came naturally to me.

An employee is an agent in AI nomenclature, right? They are somebody who are going to take actions on your behalf, that you would have otherwise taken yourself. And the goal here I think with this product is to give others the experience that I’ve had of a team of experts that you trust to act on your behalf, given all of the context that you provide.

Well, I would love to dive more into the details. It seems like it’s a bit pre-product now…

We’re early, yeah. It’s pre-product. It’s MVP right now. Part of our pitch process is going to be going out and showing it, because we have something to show, but it’s rough and dirty. But it’s really fun. I mean we’ve had multiple times, Beamer and I – and we’ve got another engineer in Japan that’s working with us… We’ve had multiple times where we just – we build something in, we watch it happen, it feels like magic, and then we’re like “Yes. Let’s keep going.” It’s those kinds of experiences that you’re looking for.

[01:00:14.20] So at what phase do you hire yourself to create a video?

Pretty early on. I mean, that’s one of the things I’m most excited about doing.

That’s gonna be your best video ever, isn’t it?

It might be. It might be the most impactful.

I would think so… [laughs] You’ve got the most into it, you know it the best, you can tell the story better than anybody, because you are the story. It’s your story.

Yeah. It could be.

That’s exciting.

It’ll be fun.

Sometimes you’re too close, though. Right?

Ooh…

Yes.

Sometimes we’re too close to the story to see the true essence of the story.

True.

You get all the feels, and the hards, and the bloody knuckles because you’ve been in the trenches on your own thing, but sometimes it’s hard to see. I don’t know. It’d be interesting to see how this plays out for you.

Yeah, but the process is - like you described earlier, you have checkpoints along the way. You sort of check yourself, you have others check you, “Does this feel right? Does this make sense to you?” and you iterate.

Break: [01:01:09.23]

Well, here’s a question… And yes, this is a segue. Will this video be shot in 3D, with spatial audio?

[laughs] It should be. I mean, I have to bring all the threads together.

I mean, this is cool stuff you’re doing… Despite what I would say a small market – you know, when Justin Searls was on the show, talking to us about his Apple Vision Pro life, I jokingly referred to him and the 11 other people who own one… And that was an understatement, but not by much. It turns out –

I think I heard that, yeah.

They’ve sold 100,000-ish units… Of course, it’s very expensive, so not meant to be, I don’t think, for the masses at this point. Clearly, Apple wanted to get something out there. But exciting nonetheless. And you’re on the bleeding edge of it, with – what’s it called, Sandwich Theater? Sandwich Vision.

Sandwich Vision is the company, but the products that we’ve launched are television first, and theater second.

Television and theater. And so what’s the difference – what are the two products then?

Television is literally like a selection of theaters that you can choose from, put in your space and watch your videos or YouTube on them. If you go to Sandwich.vision, that’s where those apps are to be found. Theater is a more immersive experience. I think of them as television being outside the box, and theater being inside the box. It comes from the premise that the most compelling use case for the vision pro so far is those entertainment experiences. That’s where a lot of value seems to be right now, and not like productivity, and things like that… Although putting the Mac virtual display in your space and working in it all day is great, because you have a huge screen… And it’s just about to get bigger, with VisionOS 2. But the experiences that people have responded to the most, the experiences that seem to prove out the product case for this and this platform to exist are the ones that immerse you in an experience, and allow you to enjoy entertainment.

So we built theater to basically deliver on that mission, which is doing the same thing that a television does, but putting you in a theater, but we realized when – we shoot John Gruber’s talk show live in San Jose every year, during WWDC… We realized though we’re going to do that again this year; what’s an interesting way to do that, in a new way? Oh, let’s shoot it in stereo. Let’s shoot it like with spatial video type thing. I wonder if we could do that and present it real time in the Vision Pro. Oh yeah, we’re building an app that puts people in a theater in the Vision Pro. We’re shooting this thing in a theater. Why don’t we combine those and present people with the live event, the talk show with Apple SVPs, Federighi, and Joswiak, and the AI Guy, JG… Why don’t we bring them together, put the user in the audience in our theater, and have them experience it in real time while the real audience does?

[01:08:02.15] So we fired on all cylinders for a couple of months, making sure that experience was going to be good for people, and then on the day, we made it happen, and it was one of the most thrilling two hours of my life. I sat there to the side of the stage at the California theater, with my Vision Pro on, experiencing the whole show from the audience’s perspective –

From the theater app.

Yeah, from the theater app.

That’s crazy.

It was a wonderful proof of concept that I realized there’s an opportunity in here to keep building on this premise.

That might actually be the killer app that makes me buy one of these things.

Adam finally wants one.

No, I’m thinking about this, because – so my biggest issue with going to the theater, especially when you have popular movies, and you’re going during a popular time, is getting the right seat. And I’m all about the right row, and the right seat. Okay?

100%.

If I can’t get the right row and the right seat, I’m gonna skip that time, and go when I can get the right row and the right seat. Even if it’s inconvenient.

Agreed. Same.

And I’m just thinking, with this you can always have the best seat, because you can kind of choose –

…where you’re sitting.

…which seat you want to even be in.

That’s right.

And maybe I want to attend a concert with folks… The ability to experience things live, or seemingly live, is now possible because of this. And I hadn’t really thought about that. And even the TV thing is super-cool, too. Like, taking YouTube, or - I don’t know, whatever else you can put on it. Like, put that on an old school TV… That’s kind of cool. It’s kind of cliché after a bit, maybe it gets old… It’s fun as like a shtick for a bit…

Well I think it’s also getting YouTube in there. Because Apple didn’t just put YouTube in there. It seems like a gap in their overall –

Is that what it is?

I mean, it’s not just YouTube, but like…

Well, the demos in the App Store show YouTube, that’s why I used that.

Well, our app is just YouTube or your own library videos… But yeah, the only platform that we integrate at this point is YouTube. And even just getting YouTube Working was pretty hard. It’s a web view, and… Like, YouTube offers up the APIs to do this for developers, because it’s in their best interest… And the other platforms are way more closed.

Sure.

This reminds me a bit - and I’m gonna ask you about the technical process, if you know much about it, to capture the theater, to make it 3D-able, I don’t know, make it visionable. Because I’m thinking about – tell me if you’ve seen this movie… It’s GranTurismo.

[01:10:26.21]

“If you miss a line in the game, you reset. You miss it on the track, you could die.”

It seems like you probably shouldn’t see it, but it’s a really good movie, and the game –

[unintelligible 01:10:35.18] video game?

Yeah, it’s new. It’s 2024 kind of a movie.

Okay, it’s a racing game.

It’s a racing game, and it’s a movie after the – it’s about the game.

Gotcha.

And so GranTurismo, the way the game came about was to be as close to a video game simulator of real car racing. And the way that they photographed, or – I don’t know, they had like this laser grid to capture all the cars, and the sound. This is, I’m assuming, what you’ve done, Adam, which is you’ve gone into the immersive details as a creative director to say “How can we truly capture the essence? Not just what we think is the essence of this theater, but truly the essence?” The feel of the seats, which you can’t feel in Vision Pro yet.

The smell of the popcorn…

Yeah, I mean, there’s some stuff in there, you know? Maybe you ship somebody an envelope that has some smells, I don’t know. Whatever.

[laughs]

But you’ve probably done something to capture the realness.

Maybe there’s somebody kicking your chair behind you, while you’re in there.

Yeah, even just last night… So the environment that we’re releasing next is called the Eagle Theater. The best movie theater in LA is called The Eagle. It’s the Vidiots Eagle Theater in my neighborhood, which is in Eagle Rock. Vidiots is this cultural institution that’s been around since 1985 in LA. There was a video store, and then they had to shut down, because nobody wanted to rent videos anymore… But it’s still got this cultural status, and so much support. So they decided to open up a movie theater.

[01:12:08.11] And they spent a lot of years, they built up a movie theater, it’s a beautiful movie theater… They play old films, they play some new films, and it’s just always such a joy to go and sit in the audience at these things. I took my 11-year-old son to The Running Man last night, the 1987 version.

Oooh, yeah.

It was so fun.

I haven’t seen that for a long time.

Right? And I don’t think I saw it – it was a slumber party movie when I was a kid.

Yeah, totally.

I never saw it in an audience. But to experience that in an audience in 2024, it’s an entirely different reaction. You get that – the psychological phenomenon behind it is called collective effervescence. And you can sort of imagine what that phrase means… It’s that feeling of sitting in a big, let’s say amphitheater or concert hall, and the music is stupendous, and it builds to a climax, and then the audience roars. And you start to get these tingles in your head. It’s an energy that’s almost palpable. You can almost feel it physically. And it’s this psychological phenomenon that was identified probably a century ago called collective effervescence. Maybe in the ’40s or ’50s.

Also known as vibes.

Vibes. Totally. Perfect.

I’s vibes.

It is vibes. And when you’re in an audience, you pick up on the vibes that you’re not just getting – you’re getting different vibes if you watch something at home by yourself. Or if you’re sitting in the wrong seat in the movie theater, the vibes are super-off.

Ain’t that terrible?

And that happens to me always, Adam. We take our kids to see kids movies. I don’t ever get to see grown-up movies anymore. But if the vibes are off, it feels like the experience of the movie is ruined for me in some way every single time I go. It’s just somebody talking too loud, or like somebody’s sneezing a lot…

Oh, my gosh.

…you know, all these things. You’re sitting in the wrong seat…

And such a high rate of failure that it’s almost like “I’m just not even going to try anymore.” Because like eight or nine times out of ten somebody ruins it.

Right, exactly.

Which sucks.

So the software and hardware now exists to make that experience way more controllable, still get the collective effervescence, really get to immerse yourself in the thing that you want to watch, and provide value to you. And that’s value that I think a lot of people are going to be willing to pay for, especially the 18 months out, when the consumer version of the Vision comes to market and is more affordable. There will be a market there for a lot more people to want these experiences.

I have a free feature for you. I’m gonna give it to you. You don’t have to pay me, and if you’ve already built it, you owe me money, because you’ve stolen it from my brain somehow. [laughter] It is the next logical step though, honestly… It’s a buddy pass. You can call it Buddy Pass. I’m gonna give that to you. And it’s where Jerod and I can attend this thing and sit next to each other.

Oh, yeah.

You know, the collective effervescence or the vibes are only as good as they can be because you still have the software and the hardware, and you kind of still potentially are alone. It’s a siloed, solo experience, for the most part, to be in a Vision Pro, or in this immersive experience. So add a buddy. Add a Buddy Pass.

Yeah, absolutely.

Is that a feature you have yet?

Well, it’s called SharePlay. Apple sort of has this API called SharePlay, where they allow you –

So smart.

I know.

And that works already with it, or can work with it?

It works, yeah. The implementation in theaters is a little weird. The first time that me and my two development partners turned on SharePlay in the Theater app we all ended up behind the back row, and we were kind of looking at the screen between the cracks, and we none of us can figure out how to move ourselves… So that was like a funny, weird, brain-breaking experience.

[01:16:03.11] The television implementation of SharePoint is really solid. Of course, now they updated the OS, and everything breaks every time there’s an OS update… But yeah, SharePlay is the proof of that concept for sure, where you and your buddy can watch the same thing in sync, and feel presence with each other.

That’s awesome.

Alright… Apple, touché.

Adam, you said if he already has the feature, he has to give you money…

That’s true…

So his is the best outcome you can possibly imagine.

Yeah. Okay. Well, what’s your Venmo?

[laughs] So Adam alluded to it earlier, but did you have to use special capture equipment in order to recreate the theater, the talk show? How did you do that? Was it like just two cameras, or was there 17 cameras, or how did that all

work?

No, exactly. No, it was two cameras, left and right.

Just two.

Yeah. So obviously, the iPhone 15 Pro lets you capture spatial video, so left and right, side by side, or it’s just stereoscopic… There’s not a good, easy way to get that video stream out, so you can do things with it like stream it. So what we ended up doing in order to try to get the highest-quality experience is we used these two Panasonic Lumix cameras, camera bodies, or 4k cameras, with prime lenses on them, 17 millimeter prime lenses on each, and then like a very, very meticulous calibration process to align them. Because alignment is everything in stereo. If it’s off, then people can feel queasy, it doesn’t feel real, the elements pop out and converge in an incorrect way… So it actually took a couple of hours on-site to calibrate the cameras and lenses together in a very clean way. And we even – there were Apple folks there that were kind of guiding us, too. There were a couple of experts on the spatial team from Apple…

That’s cool.

…because they really wanted this to go well for us.

For sure.

That’s cool.

Showing off their tech.

If it works, then – yeah, it’s their tech. Exactly. So they were there, being very, very helpful. Dave and [unintelligible 01:18:13.03] Shout-out. And yeah, it went great. And the only thing, the only failure point was the bandwidth out of the theater, which we had even paid for more bandwidth. But the bandwidth was so constrained that there were like skipped frames in the stream… Which totally sucks. The sound was perfect, and then there was this weird – it was like an insight that if the sound is perfectly fluid and present and immersive, you can get away with imperfections in the picture.

That’s interesting.

Yeah. We learned so much. It was the first go. It was like a high [unintelligible 01:18:51.16] because it was in front of a lot of people… But I figured “What better way to launch this thing than get it in front of a lot of people and try to pull something off that was really compelling?”

Yeah. You’ve gotta step out on the limb sometimes, and see what happens.

You do.

And then you have the best couple hours of – like, the most risky, but also the most memorable couple hours of your recent life, right? Like, that was very exciting for you.

Yeah. It was thrilling. The next time – and then we’re just gonna keep learning more and more, and iterating. The next thing we’re doing is next week – a friend of mine is an artistic director at a local theatre company. They do live theater, which - nobody goes and sees live theater. But when I thought about, “Oh, this is the perfect next proof of concept.” Try to even make it more immersive. So replicate the experience that we already did with Gruber’s show, do it in a different context of like the content, and try to improve on the technicals of the experience. So that’s way lower stakes. Nobody’s going to see that. I’ll announce it on my Twitter, but if five people watch it, it’ll be a triumphant success.

[01:20:03.12] Well, this has got me voting for the Vision Pro to become more successful, because I feel like if potentially when it reaches some version of critical-ish mass – because given 100,000 of sales with Apple scale is not compelling. The product is compelling. But I’m thinking like football; both versions. Like literal American football, and also soccer football. And I’m thinking, there’s so much people who want to experience something from far away, and the best version they have is a bar with a TV. And maybe that’s kind of cool too, and I totally get that. But maybe another version, or at least one more alternative could be a more realistic, immersive version that this can provide. So I’m kind of long on this, because I think that’s cool, and not everybody can afford, nor want to be literally geographically in the place. Because everything about time is time and space, right? Space-time. It’s where are you at, and when are you at. And they can’t always align perfectly. And this is the next best augmenter to that.

That’s exactly right. And it’s funny, because the key word is “access”. So for some people, access means spending the $4,000 on the Vision Pro. For other people, access means you actually have a movie theater in your town. And that kind of access is being shut off more and more. Movie theaters are sort of dying. They’re going away.

That’s a shame too, because it’s political in a way, too. It’s not just the movie theaters, it’s also Hollywood, and the way that they are very political with their access to their movies.

Yup.

There’s a lot of stuff, which - I’m sure you’re familiar with that stuff.

Oh, absolutely. The industry is just evolving in such an interesting way… And I think, hopefully, there’s this interesting alignment of motivation or incentives overlapping from the movie industry to the tech industry, that gives access to these experiences so they don’t go away forever.

Maybe hypothesizing on the business model a little bit - and maybe this is not so much the application, but maybe to the access part. Maybe you can boost some of their sales by buying a bunch and renting them. Would somebody rent, the same way they would do a ticket. Can’t be there? Send me the Vision Pro. There’s a kit that comes to my house, on time, and all I’ve got to do is ship it back. You’re leveraging the existing shipping systems that are there. You send them a Vision Pro, they already have it queued up, whatever it is, the account’s already there, however, they just like put it on… Which may not actually be possible. Maybe they can like – a version of buying the ticket, they can buy a ticket, and part of the ticket sale is renting the Vision Pro. And you get ROI, because at some point you’re cashflow-positive on that thing.

Yeah. I don’t know, it’s a little bit like renting the VCR from the video store, because you don’t have one at home, right?

Yeah, a little bit.

But it’s very immersive.

No, I mean in a good way. I don’t know that the infrastructure would be there for Apple to be able to do this, or for anybody to do this, because it’s such an expensive device… You probably haven’t had the experience of going to an Apple Store, doing the demo, and being walked through it…

Not yet.

…but it’s not like buying an Apple Watch. It’s pretty intense, in terms of curating it for you as a specific user. I think it’ll be more possible in the future with future hardware, what you described. I just found out today that Apple business is doing leasing programs for the Vision Pro, which is good. That opens up access probably a little bit more.

It changes it from a CapEx to expensable, essentially, which is cool. Well, let’s all hope for a better next version that isn’t so personalized, that you can rent them… Because that’d be kind of cool. I mean, I’m just thinking about it… I would consider, for the right event, being a subscriber, or buying a ticket.

[01:24:05.03] If I can’t spend the two grand to go to a specific amphitheater in a different town, nor take the time for the travel… Like, any trip takes you several days. On the flight, you’ve got somebody leaning on you, you’ve got the hotel expense, all these different things… And for the right thing, you’re gonna do it. But if the next best version of it - which is increasingly better and better, as the hardware and software merge to enable it, I think there’s an opportunity here that… Timing may not be perfect, but the thing is eventually perfect.

Yeah, And you want to sort of start building early there, so that as the market matures, you can be ready.

Mm-hm. I like it.

Yeah. It seems like there’s a production side to it as well, that could potentially be interesting. So you mentioned this theater putting on a play… Well, there’s lots of plays all around the world, that aren’t going to be accessible to anybody unless you’re local to that particular theater house, right? Of course, Broadway is the big one, where it’s like Hamilton - they could produce their 3D spatial version of Hamilton, and you could buy it through the theater app, for instance. But you could do that for so many things all around the world, not just plays, that aren’t typically monetized video, but now all of a sudden you have access to a cool play that’s going on in Pakistan or something, that you could watch with subtitles in 3D. There’s lots of opportunities. Of course, those are big dreams, but… I don’t know.

No, I love that idea of like foreign theater with translation right there, immersively, in real time.

Yeah. Like you’re in the theater there. I’d never go to a theater there, just because of time and place and money. But if I could be the in the theater – like, maybe it’s the most popular theater in this particular city, and everybody goes there… But you need translation, of course, to be able to understand what’s going on… So huge opportunities for bringing people all around the world.

I didn’t even say like sought-after venues.

Oh, sure, sure.

Forgive my naiveté, but is Fenway Park still a thing? Didn’t the big green wall go away, the Boston –

Not that I know of. I don’t track MLB super-close, but I’m pretty sure Fenway is still okay.

Okay, so let’s – I mean, I know that the Chicago Cubs, their stadium was renewed… So like you’ve got these older stadiums that maybe you can somehow recreate, even if they’re not in the real. There’s some nostalgia there, where you can experience something in a place that literally is not possible anymore. To me, that’s kind of like where you’re hunting. That’s where you’re going.

How can you get video of a place that doesn’t exist anymore? Are you going to stitch together old artifacts?

I’m sure there’s a way. I mean, Titanic’s a movie because they explored under the water…

That’s true.

James Cameron is amazing. I just – honestly, I just rewatched Titanic. Don’t laugh at me. It’s a good movie. My wife was like “Why in the world are you watching Titanic?” I’m like “Because it is – the feats of nature, literally, that had to be accomplished financially, as well as deep sea…”

To produce it.

It was just like “Wow.” To create this movie. So cool.

Yeah, I mean, I think you can recreate a lot from archival materials. We rebuilt the Vidiots theater just based on photogrammetry, scanning it.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Pictures and video that I took. And I think that kind of process can be done. And I think in 10 years – I was thinking this the other day, as we were driving… We were driving through LA, and I was thinking “At some point 10 years from now the technology will exist that the whole world can be recreated from archival materials, and I will know what it’s like to drive through that same city in the 1940s”, or something like that. I just think that that will be possible, and it will be computationally insignificant at that point.

[01:27:51.29] But culturally very significant.

Yes.

That’s awesome. I mean, a lot of my wife’s and my favorite shows and movies are just period pieces. Not because of the story or the actors, but because of the period. And just like, somebody went through so much work to reproduce the ’50s, or the ‘30s, or 1776, or whatever the time period is that you didn’t get to live during. And who knows exactly how accurate they portrayed it, but some version of it is played out in front of you, and it’s just fascinating to behold. So to behold that in 3D, where you get to actually walk around in it would be spectacular.

Something that comes to mind on that is Tombstone. Super-popular. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Phenomenal acting, but at the same time, just compelling. Going back in time to like old school New York.

Oh, yeah.

So cool. Right? There’s some films and shows that – and that’s a show.

And Gangs of New York… Now that you’ve just mentioned New York. Now we’re just gonna start listing movies…

Gangs of New York was a great one. Was that from 1999, Jerod?

Was that ’99? Nah –

I don’t think so. Maybe. Pretty close.

What – is this the theory about 1999?

This just is that 1999 was probably the best year in film history.

The matrix, right?

Yeah. So many.

The Matrix… The list is 30 or 40 deep. And you get 30 into it and you’re like “That is a good movie.” It’s crazy.

So many good films from that year, that I just was thrown back to that show, that episode…

It’s really weird.

…because that was cool.

Yeah, we did a show where we just basically went through all the movies together, and it just wowed Adam how many there were, because they just kept coming…

Thanks to the LLM, and not hallucinating…

Yeah. Our little buddy…

My good old buddy…

That was useful.

Yeah, that’s great.

What else? I mean, I feel like we’re almost more hyped about your Theater app than you may be. Either your energy’s gotten lower because the podcast is long, or we’re more hyped than you are. Or you’re just like benign to the possibilities.

No, I’m super-hyped. I’m super-hyped about it.

We’re hype guys here, Adam.

Yeah, no, I appreciate –

This is awesome. This thing you’ve built - it’s amazing. We haven’t even experienced it, but we’re just excited for you.

I’m gonna send the link out to people just to get them excited… Like, they link to this episode just to get people excited about it.

Yeah, man.

No, I’m so excited to build on both of these fronts. Now is such an interesting time to build. When I started my company, two conditions were in place. The iPhone had just recently come out, and the SDK was newly available to developers to build for. And Web 2.0 was coming to fruition. The social web was coming alive. The web was becoming more reactive and interactive. And of course, we know that both of those things turned into trillion-dollar business opportunities, but also it was just interesting as a technologist to be present for. And we’re at the beginning of that cycle again right now. So I’m in my mid 40s, but I’m so excited to be alive right now, you know?

It’s a good time to be alive, good time to be building software.

Okay, so Sandwich.vision, and useful.computer. I am stalking both of these URLs heavily from this day forth, particularly useful.computer. I would be so excited and giddy to play with a demo, or to be demoed. So let’s make that happen.

Yeah. I’m gonna tell Beamer I just announced it on your show.

[laughs]

Well, Adam, it’s been awesome meeting you.

Yeah, an absolute pleasure.

Getting to put a personality on the face, on the creator that we’ve known for so long, the videos… Excited for you, excited on both fronts. I think useful.computer might be huge, especially if you can bring to life what you’ve describe to us in so few of words… And of course, a totally amazing commercial for it, which everybody is going to eagerly anticipate. And then the 3D video stuff inside of the Apple Vision Pro. I mean, I’m getting closer and closer to finding a way to buy one of those suckers and not have immediate buyer’s remorse, when I could have purchased a small vehicle. It’s tough, but you’re making me want one, that’s for sure. That’s for darn sure.

Definitely gen 2. Well, let’s stay in touch so I can follow your journey with it, because I really want to know when you get there. I think it’s gonna be an important inflection point. And yeah, dude, thank you so much for this time. It was a great time having a conversation with you… And yeah, let’s do it again.

Very cool. Thank you, Adam.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Right on, guys.

Outro: [01:32:47.01]

Can I ask what you guys are excited about right now in the world? It doesn’t even just have to be tech.

I’m excited about – in my personal life right now we have a very small orchard out here. 25 fruit trees. And we’ve invested in this orchard for years. Seven years exactly. We planted it when my daughter was born. My second daughter. And she’s seven now, so I know exactly how old our orchard is. And for the first time, it’s producing fruit in abundance. So we’ve had fruit before, and we’ve had the fun times of making the applesauce, and eating the apples and the pears… But this is the first year where it’s like, “We’ve got too many apples, y’all.” And that is amazing, because now we can just go out and we can just give them to our friends, and we can figure out ways of potentially selling some apples… And for me, that’s really cool right now.

That’s so exciting, and such a wonderful answer. What other fruits besides pears and apples are you growing?

We have 20 apple trees, two pear trees, two peach trees, a nectarine and three cherries.

That must feel so good.

And the cherries are actually the biggest surprise, because they’re kind of the most joyous, because you just walk over to it and you just pull a cherry off and put it in your mouth. Life doesn’t get much better than that, honestly.

I know. I have a tangerine tree in my backyard that fruits the most delicious tangerines you’ll ever have. And so when they were in season, the every morning ritual was making a tangerine juice for myself, and it was just the best part of my day. Every single day when I drank that cup of tangerine juice, I’d close my eyes and sort of go through a gratitude process about this part of life.

Right? It literally tastes better… And maybe not literally, but it literally tastes better. There’s something about it. It’s almost like the effervescence, you know?

It’s the vibes, man. It’s in your backyard. It’s right there.

It is. It’s amazing. So that’s my excitement right now.

I’ll go somewhere similar then. My boys and I, we’ve recently begun to fish together.

Oh, nice.

So we go fishing frequently. And I have an eight-year-old and a four-year-old. And it’s the coolest thing, because they both have poles. And my youngest, surprisingly is an amazing caster. He can cast really well. And I didn’t even have to like teach him. But my first son I had to teach how to cast.

You’ve got a natural on your hands.

He’s so good. And he catches the fish, frequently. And so like just being a dad, and that time, and fishing… That’s what’s exciting me. Planning an evening fish after dinner, or a Saturday morning kind of fish with them… Is that what you call it? Gone fishing, I know, but you say “I’m planning a fish…”, I don’t know if that’s a proper phrase or not.

Yeah, you go fishing. Fishing trip.

Yeah. That’s what we do.

A fishing session…?

Yeah. I’m excited about that stuff. It’s like “Well, how can I get to more fishing with my sons?” And it’s not even like we’re hardcore. It’s just, we’re together. It’s all it’s about.

Yeah. Oh, it’s beautiful. Communal… That’s the thing. Anything you get to do with others, that’s the magic of life.

It’s good, guys. Great answer.

So Adam, given that you’re a filmmaker – would you call yourself a filmmaker? Obviously, right?

Sure.

You make films. But do you identify as a filmmaker?

[laughs] I went to film school at NYU. I was definitely a filmmaker, and now I’m just multi-hyphenate… But yeah, one of the things that I am still is that.

Okay. I’d imagine, given that background, that you have a passion for particular movies, particular directors… I’m curious, has there been – is there a particular director or a recent movie that’s just like “I can’t wait to see it”, or “I’m so excited they created that film…”