SETH JUAREZ: Hello, and welcome back.
I am Seth Juarez.
I'm here with Justin Fineberg founder
and CEO of Cassidy AI.
Building AI tools for
the masses. How are you doing, buddy?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: I'm great, Seth. It's great
to be here in Microsoft Builds.
SETH JUAREZ: We get to sit
here and just chat,
and I'm like, don't use it up. This is all good stuff.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: It's to much good stuff.
SETH JUAREZ: We get to much good stuff.
Tell us about
Cassidy AI and what you do.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Man. Well, I'll tell you.
I'll give you background.
Basically, my background building in this space.
SETH JUAREZ: I'm sorry.
Before you go, live questions.
Please get your questions in
the question box. Get that started.
We want to get it because otherwise,
I will hug all of his time.
He's an awesome dude.
Please make sure you get a question.
Cassidy AI. Sorry, go ahead.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Man.
Basically, my introduction to
AI basically started when GPT-3 came out.
I had my ChatGPT moment
a couple of years prior to this mass interest.
SETH JUAREZ: Right before.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Immediately
I started making
content in the AI space,
just talking about how we were using AI,
building products, things like that.
When ChatGPT came out, there was just an explosion.
Obviously, this mass appeal of interest in this space.
Off the back of that, we started
Cassidy really with the idea of how can we
bring more power to
non technical people who are excited about AI,
don't know much about AI generally and
allow them to build these AI workflows
that are really unique to their business.
That's what we started Cassidy on,
and it's been really awesome.
SETH JUAREZ: What was it like?
Because GPT-3,
I heard rumblings about it.
But you got into that right away,
and my sense is that you were like, what is this?
But you had that wow moment beforehand.
Can you tell us what that experience was like and
why people should be really
super excited about this tech?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Well, it was just as
mind blowing then as it is
now in a very smaller way at the time.
But we immediately just started using in
the products that we were building, my co founder and I.
But it wasn't until really ChatGPT came out,
that product shift where it was in that chat
experience that everybody in the world was like,
holy wow. This is amazing.
That was just really the impetus to start
this company was like, how do we make it?
How do we give more power to
these non technical users who
are excited about this technology?
Because, really, there's never been
a technology shift that gotten
the mass excitement like AI has.
SETH JUAREZ: I know.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: It's so unique.
SETH JUAREZ: It's been
different because as I've seen,
maybe you can validate this or you say,
hey, Seth pecreek.
It was the first time that it
wasn't tech companies saying, you should do this.
It was the masses saying,
we want this and it was total.
We haven't had that reversal
since I don't know, the iPhone.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: It's such a unique time for developers,
whatever product you're building.
If you're building a construction CRM
for construction, or whatever it is.
You can now add AI into your product
and really just delight users in a way
that's never really been possible with
any other technology shifts and I think
that's what's so excited about this new movement towards,
how do you actually build AI products?
They've been really excited about that.
SETH JUAREZ: That's cool.
The digital questions are coming in.
Keep them coming. We have
a digital question. Who's given that to?
SPEAKER 1: We have a question from Randy and
the Chat and he's asking Justin,
how can Cassidy AI enhance collaboration and
productivity within a team that
includes both technical and non technical members?
SETH JUAREZ: How can Cassidy AI help
productivity with a team
that's both technical and non technical?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Our goal with Cassidy
is really to
give the full power of AI that an engineer might have,
who's completely technical to build anything,
but have the usability that someone who
doesn't even know what an API is could
really build this complex workflow
that's really unique to them.
What Cassidy enables is someone like
a sales development representative
or a marketing associate,
to really look at what are their workflows,
what do they do on a daily basis
and then actually put AI to the test.
How can you build, connect all of your tools together,
bring in your data, and replicate
those exact workflows that you as an employee are doing?
That was really only possible
before if you knew how to code.
If you could put things together,
you could build something yourself and that's
really what Cassidy enables is just
that totally non technical user can really
build powerful software without the knowledge.
SETH JUAREZ: I love how first of all,
LLMs are enhancing productivity,
but now you're going the extra step of enhancing
the productivity of someone who
maybe he's not used to technology yourself.
It looks like we have an in person question over here.
Yes, sir?
SPEAKER 2: Thanks, Seth.
Thanks, Justin.
I'm loving your guys passion.
My question is, given the fact that just two years ago,
you didn't have access to this,
how are you preparing your clients and
yourself for the continued change,
the pace of innovation that's just blistering?
SETH JUAREZ: The question, it's great.
How are we preparing folks for the continued change?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Look, I think
the way that I think about this
and you saw first hand.
We were all at the Keynote the other day,
Sam Altman came out,
and he said, "You can now
add intelligence to your product."
I sat there and I thought I go,
I don't really know what that means.
I don't think anyone
really knows what that means at this point.
I think the key takeaway
there is that there really aren't any experts.
The playbook hasn't been written.
My advice to clients,
to developers is to approach AI with
this level of just curiosity and experimentation,
knowing that hey,
we all don't really know what the future holds.
We don't know what the next model looks like.
If you go into it with just this experimentation,
this curiosity, this willingness
to just act like a start up, move fast.
I think that's how you prepare
yourself and the AI generation,
whether you're building products or just looking
to enhance productivity internally.
That's the way that I recommend.
SETH JUAREZ: I love it, because we don't
know what the future looks like.
Everyone here that's watching and in person,
they get to make the future what they want with this.
Looks like we have another question coming up.
What's up from digital audience?
SPEAKER 1: This one's from Kate online.
Kate is asking, what are the biggest mistakes you
see companies make when they begin their AI journey?
SETH JUAREZ: What are some of
the biggest mistakes companies
from Kate that they make when they
start their AI journey?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: I think that the mistake that
companies are making in a lot of
ways are they're so focused on adding AI for AI sake.
They're not as focused on actually solving real problem.
I think that's one thing here
that there's obviously a lot of interest.
There's a lot of push to jump in and use it.
But ultimately, AI is a solution to a problem and I think
it's important to remember
that no matter you're building products,
you're trying to solve internal productivity
gains, whatever it is.
Start with the problem and
then move back to the solution,
and in a lot of cases, that solution will be AI.
But that's the way I would think about it.
SETH JUAREZ: You know what? I have
the privilege sometimes of giving
talks at different places around
the world and I always ask,
how many of you have had your manager say,
you need to put AI in your product and
almost every one of them raise their hand.
People are having a hard time
because there's like this inversion of,
well, let's find
a problem first and then see how AI can solve it.
Do you have any tips for how people can do that?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: To figure out?
SETH JUAREZ: Is there a rule of
thumb or some principles of like,
that's an AI thing that you could do?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: I think it goes back to what I said,
which is just this experimentation.
I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit.
When you dive in and you use something like ChatGPT,
or use any AI product.
Just look at those use cases that
are very clear and evident on the surface.
Don't try to automate
all of your work, automate your company.
I think there's a lot of false promises out there.
There's a lot of flashy demos out there.
But really starting with first principles,
what are the things that directly this thing can solve?
That's the way I approach is, is focus on
that low hanging fruit initially,
and then expand from there.
SETH JUAREZ: I love it.
Looks like we have a question from the digital audience. What do we go?
SPEAKER 1: Yes. A little
bit more about Cassidy.
From Susan in the chat, she is asking,
is there any training course
that is provided to learn how to
use Cassidy for a non tech savvy individual?
SETH JUAREZ: Question. Is there
a training or non tech savvy?
I bet she's way more tech savvy than she says,
to use Cassidy for someone that's non tech savvy?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: This is something we prioritize
aggressively at Cassidy.
I think every AI product, every developer needs to
think about this is that this is a new paradigm shift.
Using AI tools is generally new.
If you're at the developer conference, you use ChatGPT.
A lot of people have never used it.
When we think about how do we
actually drive this disruption with Cassidy,
we're focused on how do you build the resource library?
How do you provide weekly webinars?
How do you provide just aggressive amounts
of content so that people can
learn as much as they need
when they're using an AI tool like Cassidy.
I think it's something that every AI company,
every person who's building AI should think about,
is how do you include the education in the product?
SETH JUAREZ: That's really
cool because there's moments even and
I've been doing AI forever, I'm like a dinosaur here.
But there's moments where certain AI
clicked and you're like,
I know what this is,
and that's what you've got to do when you
help people use AI as well?
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Exactly.
You've got to get people to
the aha moment and that's never changing.
SETH JUAREZ: It looks like we
have an imperfect question.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 3: Thank you for being here.
We're so excited you're here at Microsoft Build.
Curious about what the future of Cassidy looks
like and what you're excited about coming up?
SETH JUAREZ: I didn't hear it very well.
Can you just one more time a little bit louder.
SPEAKER 3: Sure.
What do you see the future
of Cassidy looking like?
Where is it going to go? What are you excited about?.
SETH JUAREZ: Future of Cassidy. Sorry.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: We are really focused
onboarding the next million users in the AI,
the people who haven't tried the technology,
haven't had the aha moment.
I think non technical people
need that additional help that
us technical people might have more of
a ability to play with tools, understand them.
I think for Cassidy, we want to keep
building experience that makes it
easy for people non technical,
people who don't know what an API is to
really build custom automations,
something that they are excited about
now that they've seen how powerful the technology is,
but have really no idea how to start.
SETH JUAREZ: That's amazing
because, like I said,
this technology can be transformative but we need to
manage the hype as well so that we
can get to solutions that really help people.
Well, thank you so much for being with us, my friend.
JUSTIN FINEBERG: Seth, it was amazing being here.
SETH JUAREZ: Thank you so much.
Make sure to look up more
about Justin at aka.ms@justin-fineberg.
They've put it below. Thank you so much,
and we'll see you in a little bit.