March 26, 2024 • 43 mins
Have you ever wondered how a symphony of ones and zeros harmonizes with the delicate touch of piano keys? Our latest guest, Denzil Eden, an MIT and Harvard alum with a storied tenure at Microsoft, bridges this seemingly vast chasm with grace. In a heart-to-heart, she illuminates the intricate dance between her love for AI and the creative pulse of her personal passions. From writing fiction to composing melodies, Denzil unveils the magic of weaving AI into the fabric of our hobbies, crafting a tapestry of enhanced learning and mastery that's as beautiful as it is functional.
The curiosity that drives a child to dismantle toys for a glimpse into their workings is the same that propelled Denzil through the ranks of academic and professional prestige. She takes us through the meticulous practice of honing computer science skills, and the culture shocks of campus life that shape more than just academic careers. In Denzil's story, there's a lesson for the scholarly and the aspirational alike: that finding a cultural home in our educational and professional environments is as crucial as the talents we cultivate there.
Venturing into the entrepreneurial tides, Denzil recounts the creation of her brainchild, Smarty.ai, amidst the rigorous landscape of an MBA at Harvard. As we peel back the layers of launching a startup, our conversation turns to the dynamic interface of Smarty.ai, setting a new bar in the tech ecosystem. It's a tale of lessons learned, opportunities seized, and the quintessential drive to bring AI literacy to the forefront of professional growth. Join us in discovering the pivotal role AI can play across diverse industries, an invitation to both the curious novice and the seasoned technophile looking to enrich their career trajectory.
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Episode Transcript
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Denzil Eden (00:00):
AI is in such an early stage that the next five,
10 years are really going totell us what that industry is
going to look like.
The more AI literacy that youcan build up today, the better.
I think the best way to do thatis by following your passions,
your hobbies.
You said you were working withmid-journey.
If you're an artist, if youlike to draw, if you like
creating art, then I thinkmid-journey is such a great tool
(00:21):
to start playing around withyour own art and also seeing how
it responds to art.
I think AI literacy in order todevelop that the best way to do
it is to figure out what areyour hobbies, what are your
passions.
If you like writing, playaround with chat to BT or other
large language models.
If you like composing music, orif you like paying music, play
around with an AI tool in themusic scene and understand how
(00:42):
to prompt it, how to use it tocreate something new.
Because I think as you learnthose skills, you'll be able to
become an expert, because anyonetoday can become an expert in
AI because it's just so new, soearly, and the more time you
invest in it today, the betteryou'll be.
And the best way to invest timeis by doing it through a hobby
or something that you'repassionate about.
Tim Bourguignon (01:02):
Hello and welcome to Developers' Journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm your host, tim Bologna.
On this episode, I receiveDenzil Aden.
As a solo technical founder,denzil carved her niche with an
(01:22):
AI-focused degree from MIT, mbafrom Harvard and a distinguished
career at Microsoft.
Wow.
She is devoted to making yourlife smarter with AI, enhancing
routines, automating mundanetasks oh, I love that one and
maximizing every minute of yourday.
Don't love that one that much.
As with Smartie, and only inone AI productivity assistant.
(01:47):
She builds, and when sheunplugs because she does
sometimes Denzil plays the piano, offers fiction and upheads and
subs tea.
That's a program, denzil.
Welcome to Dev Journey.
Denzil Eden (02:00):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Tim Bourguignon (02:03):
Oh, I'm excited as well, and it's been so long.
We scheduled a couple of timesI had to reschedule, so I'm
really thrilled this ishappening right now.
Let's wait Me too, but before wecome to your story, I want to
thank the terrific listeners whosupport the show.
Every month you are keeping theDev Journey lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
(02:25):
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo and click on the
support me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable Dev Journey journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest.
(02:46):
So, denzil, as you know, theshow exists to help the listener
understand what your storylooked like and imagine how to
shape their own future.
So, as usual on the show, let'sgo back to your beginnings.
Where would you place the startof your Dev Journey?
Denzil Eden (03:02):
That's a great question and I love the start of
my Dev Journey because itstarted very young.
I was eight years old, I was inthird grade and we had just
taken our first computer classwhere we learned about logo.
And I don't know if you'refamiliar with logo, but it's
this children's programminglanguage with a little turtle
and you tell the turtle where togo, what to do to build a house
(03:24):
, and I fell in love.
That's when I first startedprogramming.
It's actually logo is like thefirst time I used recursion.
It was the first time I learnedhow to make if this, then that
statements and I fell in loveand I clicked instantly for me.
I just understood how to talkto this turtle and I could tell
(03:45):
that my friends didn't get it aswell as I did and it just felt
very magical and I'm lucky.
I grew up in a very tech area ofCalifornia.
I was in the Silicon Valley, mydad was an electrical engineer
and a software engineer, and soI had some exposure to that
early on, but I never thought ofmyself as a software engineer.
(04:05):
That was something that I evenwanted to do until I started
playing around with logo and itjust opened up all of these
doors for me and I startedcoding because of that very
young.
I took that passion with methrough high school to
eventually went to college atMIT and I chose to go there
because I really wanted to studycomputer science, although I
was still very convinced that Ididn't want to be a software
(04:27):
engineer.
I wanted to do something elsewith technology.
So I tried biotech.
I tried out a bunch ofdifferent careers but I kept
coming back to just purebuilding and I ended up doing a
master's at MIT as well.
My master's had a theoreticalfocus in AI, but I did a thesis
project in human computerinteractions and I ended up
building pretty much a precursorto Slack, but for the classroom
(04:51):
.
So it was a collaborative,asynchronous platform, but for
education classrooms, and that'swhat I wrote my thesis on.
It was something that I wish Ihad stuck with, but I really
didn't think I could be afounder.
I thought that being a founderwasn't for me and I wasn't
really sure who the profile was.
But it wasn't something that Iwanted to pursue.
So I ended up going to big techinstead.
(05:11):
I started as a PM at PowerPoint, liked it but missed coding.
So I started teaching computerscience at a community college
and then eventually at SanFrancisco State, just as a guest
lecturer.
And then I still missed codingand so then ended up switching
to being a software engineer atYammer.
But I've always been in theenterprise productivity space,
(05:33):
always in the future of worktools and helping people be more
productive at work,specifically at Microsoft.
But even during that time Iwasn't sure exactly what I
wanted to do.
I wasn't sure if that was whatI should focus on for the rest
of my life.
So I started trying out a bunchof different careers, from law,
from finance to politics,decided to go to business school
and really both broadened myskill set but also give me some
(05:56):
time to figure out what is itthat I want to do with this time
and with my passion and mycuriosities?
And that's really where I cameup with the idea for Smurdy.
I almost reverse engineeredinto it.
I was still trying out differentthings, but I asked myself if I
could only work on one thingfor the rest of my life.
What would it be?
And this was back in 2018.
And AI was interesting, but itwasn't like it is today.
(06:18):
And it's funny.
I used the same pitch for mystartup, smurdy, today that I
did in 2018, but the appetitefor it has changed so
drastically.
But back then I was like, if Ido believe this future is coming
and I want to be part of thatfuture.
And so I started reallybuilding Smurdy for myself,
reverse engineered into what theproduct is today and tried to
(06:38):
raise money in business school.
It didn't work out and then Ikept pitching to the same people
.
I kept iterating my pitch, keptiterating the product and
eventually raised that firstcheck which made it easier to
raise more money, and now I'mworking on it full time.
Tim Bourguignon (06:54):
And congratulations on that.
Thanks, but that's a wholebunch to unpack before we get to
Smurdy.
That's okay for you?
Yes, definitely.
I'd like to come back to thatturtle, the way you talked about
it, saying well, I understoodhow to talk to that turtle.
I love this formulation Becausethat's really something.
When you're trying to talk to acomputer and trying to tell it
(07:18):
to do something and you're notspeaking the right language, it
doesn't click.
As you said, it's so difficultto really Understand the way you
should be talking to it and theway you personally find this
turtle or this computer as atotal and say I understood how
to talk to it.
I love it.
It's really saying, hey, youfound the right language.
Did you realize right away thepower that software could have
(07:43):
and so what the power you hadlearned in talking to that
turtle could bring to your life?
Not yet at that point.
Denzil Eden (07:51):
I don't know if at that point I understood how
transformative of a technologyany sort of software language,
programming language is, but Idid understand that computers
spoke differently than humansdid, and that's what programming
languages allowed us to do,that they allowed us to
communicate what we wanted Totechnology, and I actually think
the greatest thing about a Itoday is that it's made it even
(08:14):
easier for humans to communicatewith technology, because now
technology can communicate theway we communicate.
But back then we needed tolearn how to use these
intermediary bridge languages inorder to be able to allow
software to do what we wanted,and I thought that was really
fascinating.
I was always really into logicand puzzles, and it was just a
puzzle that needed to be solved,and then, as I grew older, I
(08:36):
really understood OK, like theseare the limits of technology,
this is what are the limits ofmy own programming skills, and
try to find connections there.
Tim Bourguignon (08:47):
How is has been your, your relationship with
students?
You mentioned you were ateacher for a bit with students
for whom it didn't click the wayyou did for you and and
bridging that gap and helpingthem understand exactly how that
work.
If it clicked for you from theget go love at first sight I
(09:07):
would almost say how did youbridge that gap and build this
relation with students?
Denzil Eden (09:11):
That's a great question, and teaching was like
such a great experience for mebecause it really showed me that
everyone just learns in adifferent way.
No skill is unknowable.
It is just about finding theway that your brain works, your
thinking patterns work, andtrying to find alignment.
And so, for me, I really gaveme a great perspective on what
is wrong with education today,and also that no one can say
(09:36):
that they're not a coder becauseyou have the skills, you have
the ability to think.
It's just about figuring outhow to make your brain talk, the
way that computer brains talk.
Tim Bourguignon (09:46):
So do you have some, some, some techniques,
when it's not clicking, withpeople to find the way that they
need to hear it, so that clicks?
Denzil Eden (09:56):
I don't know if it's necessarily about like how
you hear it, but I will say itis about practice, because the
more you do different exercises,you'll start to recognize
patterns between how you solvecertain problems in the computer
science space and Java, andyou'll find the most problems
that you're seeing in theclassroom setting are just
variations of the same sameconundrum.
(10:19):
And then you just need to startrecognizing OK, like this is
how these are the parametersthat the function needs.
This is how functions areusually structured, and so I
think it's practice more thananything else, practicing to
think the way that computersthink and learning what they
need.
Tim Bourguignon (10:35):
OK, so really using it, using it, using it,
and at some point you will seeand it will click.
Denzil Eden (10:41):
Exactly, and I think that's true today too,
with all of these tools that areout there and all of this, all
of the hype around promptengineering.
It is about practicing learninghow to prompt these models.
It's learning about how AImodels think and understanding
how you can, like, adapt yourown thinking to match that.
Tim Bourguignon (11:02):
Isn't there a difference though, in such that
a programming language is isvery, very Cartesian and
definite.
Either you have the right wayto ask or you don't, and there's
no two ways on all of those, nothree ways to do the same thing
.
In a way, crafting your promptswith chad, gpt or with the LMS
(11:26):
we have nowadays, you canachieve the same results with
very different ways, and sodabbling into it quite often
leads to some results as well,and it's not a black and white
result.
It's very shades of gray,except if you add some
parameters etc.
But but if you stick to the, tothe prompting, it's really
shades of gray.
Harder in computer science todouble your way into the, how
(11:51):
the computer is supposed to, tobe talked to.
Denzil Eden (11:54):
I think that's a great point.
I agree with you.
Like with a traditionalprogramming language, there is
only one right way to talk tosoftware, to whatever you're
trying to get done with promptengineering.
Of course, you can asksomething in multiple ways and
you'll get different results,and you should probably
experiment so you can see whatparameters lead to what results.
(12:14):
But at the same time, I dobelieve that there's like an
optimal way to do prompting, andwe just haven't fully
discovered that yet.
I think five years from nowthere will be textbooks that
will say like this is exactlyhow you should be prompting this
model specifically, and I thinkthat precision will come.
But right now we're all in thisexploratory phase, trying to
(12:36):
understand what is the bestlanguage.
Tim Bourguignon (12:40):
Oh, we are still a baby phase of asking
questions.
I'm exploring a lot of midjourney in the past days and
weeks and understanding somepatterns and how to have to ask
questions.
This is, this is fantastic.
This is an endeavor in itselfand indeed, when you find
something that really works andyou can reproduce and is really
(13:02):
consistency, oh, now I reallylearned something.
That's very gratifying.
Denzil Eden (13:08):
I agree it's an adventure and it's really fun.
Tim Bourguignon (13:12):
It is so.
You said obviously MIT,obviously computer science, even
though you don't want to becomea hardcore software engineer,
you said but but still it had tobe in SIFT3 engineer.
Did you have doubts in whichdirection to take inside the CS
(13:32):
space?
Denzil Eden (13:34):
No, I was always interested in AI, so I knew that
I wanted to do my theoreticalmasters in that, and then I
always knew I wanted to pursuecomputer science.
There was no other major thatappealed to me.
I just wasn't sure what Iwanted to do with that major,
and so that was what was mostconfusing for me.
And then, in terms of choosingwhich university go to, I
(13:56):
actually wasn't sure I wanted togo to MIT, and then I visited
during their campus previewweekend, which happens in April,
and it was the most fun weekendI had ever had in my life up
until that point, and itconvinced me that this was the
right place for me to go to.
And so it all really just fellinto place, and I just needed to
(14:17):
experience it once to know itwas the right fit.
Tim Bourguignon (14:20):
Okay, was that weekend representative for the
years you did after?
Denzil Eden (14:26):
Yes, actually, it really was.
Tim Bourguignon (14:27):
Okay.
Denzil Eden (14:29):
It was very so.
I think MIT has this motto,which is work hard, play hard,
and even that weekend was verymuch like extremely intense but
very fun at the same time, and Ithink it just it does a really
good job of showing you whatyour college experience could be
like.
It's all student run.
Obviously, there's likeadministration overseeing
(14:49):
everything, but students reallyplan all of their events and
it's just 24 seven for threedays.
Okay, and the rest of thecurriculum is 24 seven for four
years, five years, but it's alittle bit less recreational
only, but I mean even, but it'sthe same level of intensity.
Tim Bourguignon (15:08):
Okay, that's good, that's good.
It's really a hard or a verythin line to to meet during
those open doors to really showthe the values and what the
school is made or the college ismade of, and then have the same
feeling afterwards and not feellied to.
It's really hard, it's a veryhard balance.
Denzil Eden (15:31):
I personally I'm obviously biased, but I thought
MIT did a really great job and Iactually went with a friend of
mine from high school.
We both went and she did nothave as good of an experience
and she did not end up going toMIT and so I think it does do a
good job for prospectivestudents to come see what the
atmosphere is like, see what theculture is like, and then have
them decide like is this for youor not?
Tim Bourguignon (15:53):
Yeah, indeed, indeed, indeed.
Then, moving on, when you spokeabout your theoretical
stereotypical thesis, you justsaid I wish I'd stayed with this
topic.
What do you mean by that?
Denzil Eden (16:06):
Yeah, so it's actually not with.
So the way that my master's wasbroken down I could take
classes and concentrated in aspace and then I could do a
thesis project in any space thatI wanted, ideally with
complementary skills to mytheoretical thesis.
Well, my theoreticalconcentration wasn't AI, but
back then it was.
(16:26):
Machine learning was there, butit was still early.
I didn't really like pursuethat as much.
I was still doing more of likea high level.
AI 101 theoretical concentrationand then my application thesis
project was in human computerinteractions and I built this
platform called Nora no onerevises alone and it was
(16:46):
literally slack, but forclassrooms and it was for
helping students asynchronouslycollaborate on assignments
during the school day, and I, inhindsight and even then, could
have turned it into an actualproduct and business, but I
didn't do it and I don't knowwhy.
(17:07):
I just felt very I guess I wasvery afraid of the idea of
striking out on my own andbuilding a company with a
product that I already had, withusers who were willing to pay
for it, and I think it was just.
It was a different time really,because I feel like
universities today have a lotmore programs around
entrepreneurship and MIT thandid, but it wasn't a big part of
(17:31):
the campus culture and if I goto campus now, it's so different
.
There are so many programsaround.
How do you start a startup, howdo you raise money, how do you
start building something peoplewant, and so that's really what
I meant.
I had this thing that I really,even in hindsight now, could
have created a real companyaround, but it was just so hard
for me to grasp that that wassomething I could do and that
(17:53):
this was enough of a startingpoint to get started.
Tim Bourguignon (17:57):
Okay, makes more sense.
So you were not ready for thestartup growing experience yet,
yeah, okay, and does thisproduct still has its place in
the world 10 years later?
No, timing is everything.
Denzil Eden (18:12):
And even then it was a little bit too early for
that asynchronous collaborationplatform, but I definitely think
there was still a lot of valuethat it was adding, especially
in the classroom setting.
But today there's so manyalternatives there's Slack,
there's Miro, there's so manydifferent platforms that you can
use to get that same experience.
Honestly, figma could evenreplace what I built, and so I
(18:36):
think it had its time.
But that's time that time haspassed Okay, so no regrets.
Tim Bourguignon (18:42):
No regrets so then you brushed over your your
first years PM at PowerPoint,then think, yemmer.
Then there was one in between.
I think how long did that phaselast?
Or go until you had this rebootof saying what do I want to do
with my life?
Denzil Eden (19:03):
Yeah, I was working for three years a little bit
more than that and then Idecided to go to business school
and business school was reallythat period of reflection.
Tim Bourguignon (19:13):
So how did you three years go?
I mean starting the three yearsentering the, the workforce
with big air quotes or industryor big tech, as you mentioned it
.
How did that go?
How did it relate to the idealyou had in your mind?
How did that work?
And then, how do these threeyears evolve into you
questioning this and say, well,maybe I should go back to
(19:34):
business school or whatever.
I'm very interested in thosetwo.
To pals yeah, no, it's a greatquestion because I don't think
that enough people talk about,like what that feels like when
you first go into the workforce.
Denzil Eden (19:47):
It was jarring for me.
It was not what I expected.
I wasn't sure if I loved my joband I didn't know why.
And it turns out that I reallydid like my job.
I was just hungry for more andI just felt I wasn't being
challenged enough.
I didn't love my commute, whichis so funny now to talk about,
but my commute was terrible backthen.
It was an hour because I livedin San Francisco.
(20:09):
I wanted the lifestyle of beingyoung and happy with my friends
all the time, but then I wascommuting to Mountain View and
with traffic that would take anhour each way, I just felt
surprised at what I did like andalso surprised at what I didn't
like.
I didn't realize how importantthe lifestyle aspect would be to
(20:29):
me.
I didn't realize how much Iwould miss coding and actually
building something from likespecifications versus writing
the specifications, and I didn'tunderstand how different those
skill sets were.
I didn't really understand atthat time how in front of was to
understand users and becustomer obsessed, even though I
was working in product and itwas.
I was learning so much but atthe same time not appreciating
(20:53):
what I was learning, and so it'sfunny to look at it with
hindsight.
And then, because I missedcoding so much, I started
teaching computer science and Irealized that I liked teaching,
but it wasn't something that Iwanted to do as my full-time
livelihood, so I didn't want togo back to school to become a
(21:14):
professor and so I startedlooking at other jobs and I
think my number one priority atthat time had been finding
something that was in SanFrancisco.
So that was my number onepriority.
And then I was lucky enough tointerview at Yammer, which was a
acquired startup at Microsoftand their headquarters was in
San Francisco.
So that worked out really wellon that specification and they
(21:36):
were looking for softwareengineers.
So it worked out in that wayand I still got to stand at the
Microsoft umbrella, so it was aneasy transition and so it
worked out so well foreverything that I thought I
wanted at that time.
So I switched to being asoftware engineer at Yammer and
I actually really liked it.
I liked being the one buildingand seeing my changes get
(21:57):
deployed into the product andseeing how users use them.
It was just such a satisfyingfeeling.
So I was like, okay, I do likethis part of it.
But then, a year into that, Iran into that same feeling of
like okay, but I want more.
I want more challenges, I wantmore to do.
I don't know if this is where Iwant to be for the next five or
(22:18):
10 years.
I just felt really hungry butalso really lost.
That's why I decided thatbusiness school was the right
choice for me.
But it's so funny I remembereven now, when I decided to go
to business school, the head ofengineering at Yammer, who I
like never worked with but Iknew of, sat me down and said
okay, I see how hungry you are,I see that you're like pursuing
(22:41):
other things and I don't thinkyou need to stay at Yammer.
This is not a pitch for you tostay at Yammer.
I can help you work at anystartup that you want, any place
where you can like build theskill set, but I feel like you
should really go and buildinstead.
That was the first time anyonehad said to me like going to
business school was the wrongchoice, and I really look back
(23:01):
on it today very fondly becauseI understand what he was trying
to say.
He was saying there are so manyways to get the same skill set
and to feed that passion ofwanting to build and learn at an
accelerated rate.
I think it really stuck with meabout wanting to go to a
different startup, like startinga startup going somewhere
younger and smaller.
(23:22):
I think I just thought aboutthat a lot while I was at
business school.
That was my experience workingfull-time for the first time.
Tim Bourguignon (23:31):
It makes a lot of sense.
How did you come up to the ideaof going back with their quotes
again to business school anddecide on business school that
business school was the rightthing for you at that time?
Denzil Eden (23:43):
That's a great question.
I actually applied to a lot ofdifferent grad schools.
I applied to law school, Iapplied to a school for masters
of public policy.
I was confused in a lot of waysabout what I wanted.
The great thing about tech isthat it can be applied to any
industry.
There are law tech, there isfinance tech.
(24:04):
There is so many different waysyou can apply technology to
different industries.
I was like, okay, I can bringthis skill set to any space and
any career that I want.
I just have to figure out whatI want to do.
I kind of glossed over this,but in my working days I was
actually interning on the sideat a lot of other things as well
.
I was working for a KamalaHarris Senate campaign.
(24:27):
I was volunteering for them andhelping them with fundraising.
I was interning with a criminallawyer and trying to understand
if I wanted to go into criminallaw, and this was actually my
third time trying out a lawinternship.
I had already worked in patentlaw.
Before that I tried a corporatelaw internship as well.
I was confused and I wascurious.
(24:49):
I wanted to try a lot ofdifferent things and figure out
what was right for me.
Tim Bourguignon (24:55):
I love the experimental approach Really.
Okay, I don't know what I want,so let's try this, let's try
that, let's try that, let's trythat and see what sticks.
Very entrepreneurial.
Denzil Eden (25:07):
Definitely.
It's so funny because I neverlooked at that skill or that the
mindset as entrepreneurial.
But now that I look at my lifein hindsight I can say very
clearly well, those areentrepreneurial skills.
That is part of it, thatexperimental learning by doing
which is not for everyone.
Some people are actually reallygreat at looking at other
(25:28):
people's experiences and otherpeople's mistakes and learning
from that.
I'm not, and I wish I wasbetter at that, but I am very
much a experimenter, trier,iterator.
Tim Bourguignon (25:40):
Which you need nowadays, so that's fine.
So I've reached the point intime where Smarties started to
evolve in your mind.
Denzil Eden (25:48):
Exactly.
Tim Bourguignon (25:49):
So can you tell us the birth story of Smarties
before it became the company?
How did you come up with theidea?
How did you did that?
Maybe scratch an itch you hador really started to evolve into
, from maybe just an idea or ahobby into hey, this could be
more.
And what the first steps looklike.
Denzil Eden (26:11):
Yes, definitely, it's very clear in my mind.
So it happened during my secondyear of business school, maybe
a little bit during the firstyear I'd all.
I arrived at business school, Iliked it, I was open to trying
out other careers, and then Ikept finding myself coming back
to tech and I said that I didn'twant to pivot out of technology
(26:32):
and so what can I do withtechnology?
And HBS was really the firsttime I felt supported in
entrepreneurship and pursuingthat as a journey.
There were so many classesaround it.
I still think HBS is verytheoretical when it comes to
entrepreneurship, compared tosome other business schools that
are, I think, a little bit moreapplication heavy, and I know
(26:53):
they're changing that.
They're trying to become moreapplication and experimental
focus, but at the time it wasstill more theoretical, I think.
But it was my first exposure tothat as an experience, and one
of my closest friends at abusiness school had been a
founder before, and so I reallygot to see what that journey had
been like for him and he wantedto start another startup right
(27:15):
away, and so it was exciting tosee the world through his eyes
and that lens and it definitelyencouraged me to think about
that as a career path for myself.
And so then I started askingmyself okay, if I could only
work on one thing for the restof my life, what space do I want
to be in?
And AI had always beensomething that I was really
excited about.
I wanted to help be part ofthat journey of making that a
(27:36):
reality, and back then it wasstill very much machine learning
, natural language processing,nothing like what we have today
with LLMs, but it was stillsomething that was rapidly
advancing and so I was like Iwant to be in that space, I want
to see how I can get into that.
And then I started asking aboutquestions in my own life,
problems in my own life, and atthat time I really vividly
(27:58):
remember I was having anxietyattacks like pretty much every
day.
I just felt so overwhelmed witheverything that was in my life,
both my personal commitments, myprofessional commitments,
everything that I was trying tobalance, and I had this
realization that more than 25%of the things that I was doing
every day could easily beautomated with existing
(28:20):
technology.
And I remember looking it upand I think a lot of corporate
knowledge workers at that timehad like 30%.
Today I would say it's about60% of the work that we do every
day could easily be automatedwith existing technology, and
the big problem there and whythat wasn't being solved with
technology, was that none of oursoftware was able to talk to
(28:44):
each other.
We had to manually handle everysoftware individually.
Everything was in thesedifferent silos, and so I was on
this kick of OK, everything hasan API.
Apis can talk to each other.
Apis are programming languages.
Apis are languages for howsoftware speaks to other
software, and all I needed to dowas create this hub that
(29:06):
allowed these APIs to connect,and I should be able to talk to
this hub, and so that's howSmarty really came up as an idea
in my mind.
I had this vision around thisconversational web operating
system where I tell Smarty whatI need to do, smarty figures out
the intent, what APIs arerelevant, and then connects it
all together and makes it work,and that's how I came up with
(29:29):
the idea, and I started buildingSmarty as a chat bot, just
something that I was chatting to.
I would tell Smarty things thatwere on my plate, and if Smarty
could automate it, it would,and that's how I got started.
That's the pitch that I gave tomy first investor.
I didn't really understandanything about how to pitch, how
(29:49):
this is too big of an idea andyou need a niche to get started.
You need a real pain point, youneed a real customer.
It was definitely a learningjourney for me, but that's how I
got started.
Tim Bourguignon (30:00):
And it is awesome, it was very long-winded
.
No, no, that's.
It's really cool.
I was really thinking whatwould be the analogy with
existing tools.
It's kind of an overlay overZapier, which has the connectors
, but not this AI part, where itfigures out on its own what it
(30:21):
should be doing.
You really have to tell them,but it's not just that.
So, yeah, interesting.
And this started in 2018, isn'tit so?
Before chatGPT emerged, or atleast to the public, before
everybody understood that thisis happening?
(30:42):
How was it to work in LLM backthen versus now?
Denzil Eden (30:47):
Yeah, it was a different way of thinking about
AI.
It was very much around I wasusing an open AI API for natural
language processing, but thatisn't what chatGPT is today.
Then I had these goals aroundcreating machine learning models
, but everything that hashappened in the last couple of
years has completely changedthat Not just for me, but for
people who were machine learningexperts working at companies
(31:10):
building these models, it is abrave new world, but not a
surprising one.
Even back then, I had that samevision that LLMs make even
easier today, but it's just adifferent methodology to get
there.
Tim Bourguignon (31:24):
Did you change some part of your stack after
LLMs came out?
Denzil Eden (31:34):
No, I would call it AI 1.0.
We had that before and todaywe're still using that, but now
we're layering in AI 2.0 withall of the language learning
models and also large actionmodels.
Really, this is a new time forhow the AI works, but in terms
(31:54):
of the actual infrastructurethat you need to build a product
like Smarty, all of that staysthe same the APIs that were
connected to you, how those APIsconnect together, how you as a
user communicate with Smarty andwhat information you need to
specify all of that stays thesame.
In some ways, I feel like itwas great that I had that period
of building up thatinfrastructure and now I get to
(32:16):
just play around with how the AIat the top level works for how
users interface with Smarty.
Tim Bourguignon (32:24):
Who do you define as your competitors?
Are those the Zappiers whichare trying to add AI on top of
the services now, or is that adifferent space?
Denzil Eden (32:35):
It's a different space, and so I can almost see
Zappier or IFTHT IFTHT, this andthat being APIs that we
integrate with.
It's really not even acompetitor because they are
really providing the tools fromcreating these very intricate
connections, and I can seeSmarty even using those
intricate connections betweenthese different APIs.
(32:55):
Our competitors are more in thefuture of work tool space, so
tools that are creatingcountering solutions, tools that
are creating email managementsolutions, contact management
solutions, and these are toolsthat you're using at work.
But a lot of our users haveproduct fatigue because they
don't want to switch between allof these different niche
productivity tools.
They instead want an all-in-oneplatform that handles all of
(33:18):
their favorite productivityfeatures, and so we're more in
that space, and so I would saySmarty's biggest value
proposition is first, thisall-in-one platform, trying to
integrate with everything acrossyour administrative stack and
right now we're just on top of GSuite but everything from your
email to your Google contacts,to your Google calendars, across
multiple accounts.
So your professional accounts,your personal accounts, just
(33:40):
having all of that accessible inone place.
So that's our top valueproposition.
Our second one is really aroundthese conversational commands,
so being able to say somethinglike coffee with Tim at Blue
Bottle in San Francisco at 2 pmLondon time and having that
calendar event sent with theright time zone with the right
location, just with keyboardshortcuts and conversational
(34:00):
commands.
So that's our second biggestvalue proposition.
And the third one is using AIto have recommendations around
when is the best time to getsomething done, what is the best
way to plan your schedule?
Brain-dumping tasks into Smartyand having Smarty AI
autoschedule it into your day orinto your weeks and so really
helping you make sure you neverdrop the ball.
And I think that last valueproposition is really where most
(34:22):
of our competitors are.
So there are a lot of toolsthat are helping you use AI to
autoschedule your day, andthat's where our biggest
competitors are.
Tim Bourguignon (34:32):
Okay, makes sense.
How did you tackle the problemof trusting the AI?
I mean, if I'm just conversingwith AI and I trust this AI,
he's going to create the rightappointments, send those to my
counterparts.
It's going to be a differenttime zone and it's going to do
it on its own and correctly.
(34:52):
I would double-check everythingit's doing.
Denzil Eden (34:55):
Yeah, no, of course , and that's actually one of the
biggest things that we tried tokeep in mind while building out
Smarty.
So I don't know if you rememberXAI it came out before 2018.
It was this assistant, amy.
You would CC Amy on your emailsand then Amy would just do
things for you, and the problemwith that experience was exactly
(35:19):
what you said that you werelike what is Amy going to do?
How is Amy going to do this?
What if Amy does it the wrongway?
And so, really, our goal withSmarty is not to create this
black box around how things aregetting done, but instead to
give you the right commands atthe right time so you know
exactly what is being done andhow it's being done.
(35:39):
And so, instead of you justdelegating tasks away to Smarty,
it's really taking theseworkflows like switching to my
calendar app, dragging anddropping, adding this contact to
that calendar invite.
Instead of doing that at thatcrucial step where you have all
of these mundane workflows thatyou have to do, smarty is
specifically replacing thatexperience with a single command
(36:00):
where you control everything.
You control exactly the time,you control exactly the people.
So really finding that balancebetween giving you the right
control versus delegating themundane parts of product
switching, figuring out like howdoes this work, things like
that?
Tim Bourguignon (36:17):
Okay, a hard balance to find, but when you
find it, I really trust it toreally free up your mind, free
up your calendar, doing stufffor you, but I'm still yeah, I
can see that you're like I don'tbelieve that you can fully take
(36:37):
away that fear, and I thinkit's.
Denzil Eden (36:38):
You have to try the product.
But it's really.
You are in control, you triggerthe commands and you know
exactly how the command is goingto work.
So that confidence, I think,and that trust, builds up over
time.
Tim Bourguignon (36:51):
Okay, I'll have to give it a go.
Then you mentioned a couple oftimes you were searching for
something to work on for therest of your life.
How does that collides maybedoesn't collide with the stellar
growth of AI right now?
Will there still be a need forhow to put it a tool that is
(37:20):
deep enough in terms of youtelling it what it should be
doing and really helping it,versus, at some point, some AI
able to discover that on theirown and basically over patting
your tool on the right and justdoing it without somebody
teaching them that?
Do you see what I mean?
Denzil Eden (37:41):
Yes, I do, but I still think in that scenario,
there will always be aninterface that you're
interacting with as the user,and, regardless of what the AI
is doing, there's something thatyou are interacting with as the
user, and I want to be part ofbuilding that platform, that
interface, whatever it is.
This doesn't have to be smarty,and so I think one of the big
(38:01):
things as a founder is you'llhave a lot of ideas, but finding
something that you can really,that you're really committed to
in the long run, that's reallyimportant, and for me, even if
smarty fails this concept, thisvision of what that interface
looks like, someone is going tocreate it, and if I'm not going
to be doing it at smarty, then Iwant to go find a competitor or
(38:24):
another company that's workingon that same vision and go work
for them, and so that's reallyhow it aligns for me.
Tim Bourguignon (38:34):
And that is awesome.
It really makes a lot of sensewhen you describe, or when we
talked about, the product pieceand the trust piece on top of
the AI.
So really, this is somethingthat I don't see AI solving for
us.
What's happening in thebackground?
Yes, maybe, but this whole howhumans or tailoring for humans,
is really a hard nut to crack,and this I don't expect the UI
(38:56):
to crack that in the near future.
So that's where your tool ormaybe another, as you're saying
really has to shine and comeinto play.
Denzil Eden (39:08):
I definitely think it's.
We're really early, we're notsure what that's gonna look like
, but it's exciting to be partof that journey that shapes it.
Tim Bourguignon (39:16):
Very cool.
Coming back to your students,was there something, some kind
of piece of advice, stuff youtold them again and again to
help them kickstart their career, start on the right track and
maybe get a glimpse on what youwere doing or something else?
Is there such such an advice?
Denzil Eden (39:38):
Yeah, it's a great question.
It's actually something I'vebeen thinking about a lot
recently, especially with therapid buildup of AI tools that
are coming out there.
I think AI literacy issomething that is becoming more
and more important than everbefore, and that doesn't mean
understanding how AI worksbehind the scenes.
It's about understanding how touse AI as a tool to improve
(40:01):
your own job, whatever you aredoing, and it's something that I
am telling folks today who areinterested.
Ai is in such an early stagethat the next five, ten years
are really going to tell us whatthat industry is going to look
like, and so the more AIliteracy that you can build up
today, the better, and I thinkthe best way to do that is by
following your passions, yourhobbies, and so you said you
(40:23):
were working with mid-journey.
If you're an artist, if you liketo draw, if you like creating
art, then I think mid-journey islike such a great tool to start
playing around with your ownart and also seeing how it
responds to art, and I think, ailiteracy.
In order to develop that.
The best way to do it is tofigure out what are your hobbies
, what are your passions.
If you like writing, playaround with chat, tbt or other
writing language, large languagemodels, if you like composing
(40:46):
music or if you like payingmusic, play around with an AI
tool in the music scene andunderstand how to prompt it, how
to use it to create somethingnew.
Because I think as you learnthose skills, you'll be able to
become an expert.
Because anyone today can becomean expert in AI because it's
just so new, so early, and themore time you invest in it today
, the better you'll be.
And the best way to invest timeis to by doing it through a
(41:08):
hobby or something that you'repassionate about.
I think that's the same adviceI would have given my students
10 years ago in these classes.
If you're interested intechnology, technology can be
applied to any space, to anyindustry.
Even back then, if you wereinterested in music, you could
try to build a piano usingsoftware.
You could try to build I don'tknow like a drawing tool or an
(41:29):
art tool using software.
I think there is somethingreally powerful about being able
to align your passions withyour interests and your goals
and your learning skills,because the more you can tie in
something you're trying to learnto something that you enjoy
doing, the faster and more funI'll be.
Tim Bourguignon (41:48):
Amen to that and I love that your answer digs
into exploration again, sayinghey, do something with it and
try what happens.
And this is exactly the samediscourse you had at the
beginning of the show, talkingabout how you went at your life.
So it's all full circles.
Denzil Eden (42:07):
I think life, you know yellow, you only live once.
So you need to exploreeverything and figure out what
is what brings true to you.
Tim Bourguignon (42:18):
Then go explore Fantastic.
Where would be the best placeto continue the discussion with
you?
Denzil Eden (42:27):
Please find me on LinkedIn.
I'm Denzil Eden and I lovetalking to people about their
careers, their journeys, theirinterest in technology, ai,
literacy, and I'd love to giveanyone a personalized onboarding
onto Smarty, and then you canalways try out Smarty at
wwwsmartyai.
We're an early product, we havesome customers and we're always
(42:48):
looking for more people to giveus feedback.
Tim Bourguignon (42:51):
Then you heard her let's go there, anything
else.
Denzil Eden (42:56):
No, that's it.
That's me in a nutshell.
Tim Bourguignon (42:58):
Fantastic, denzil, it was really fun.
Thank you so much for sharingyour life and for the good love
we had.
I had a fun four times I hadfun too.
Denzil Eden (43:05):
thank you so much for having me.
Tim Bourguignon (43:07):
Like was, and this has been another episode of
Devil's Journey.
It was each other next week.
Bye, bye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
If you like the show, pleaseshare, rate and review.
It helps more listenersdiscover those stories.
You can find the links to allthe platforms the show appears
(43:30):
on on our website devjourneyinfoslash subscribe.
Talk to you soon.
AI is in such an early stage that the next five,
10 years are really going totell us what that industry is
going to look like.
The more AI literacy that youcan build up today, the better.
I think the best way to do thatis by following your passions,
your hobbies.
You said you were working withmid-journey.
If you're an artist, if youlike to draw, if you like
creating art, then I thinkmid-journey is such a great tool
(00:21):
to start playing around withyour own art and also seeing how
it responds to art.
I think AI literacy in order todevelop that the best way to do
it is to figure out what areyour hobbies, what are your
passions.
If you like writing, playaround with chat to BT or other
large language models.
If you like composing music, orif you like paying music, play
around with an AI tool in themusic scene and understand how
(00:42):
to prompt it, how to use it tocreate something new.
Because I think as you learnthose skills, you'll be able to
become an expert, because anyonetoday can become an expert in
AI because it's just so new, soearly, and the more time you
invest in it today, the betteryou'll be.
And the best way to invest timeis by doing it through a hobby
or something that you'repassionate about.
Tim Bourguignon (01:02):
Hello and welcome to Developers' Journey,
the podcast bringing you themaking of stories of successful
software developers to help youon your upcoming journey.
I'm your host, tim Bologna.
On this episode, I receiveDenzil Aden.
As a solo technical founder,denzil carved her niche with an
(01:22):
AI-focused degree from MIT, mbafrom Harvard and a distinguished
career at Microsoft.
Wow.
She is devoted to making yourlife smarter with AI, enhancing
routines, automating mundanetasks oh, I love that one and
maximizing every minute of yourday.
Don't love that one that much.
As with Smartie, and only inone AI productivity assistant.
(01:47):
She builds, and when sheunplugs because she does
sometimes Denzil plays the piano, offers fiction and upheads and
subs tea.
That's a program, denzil.
Welcome to Dev Journey.
Denzil Eden (02:00):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Tim Bourguignon (02:03):
Oh, I'm excited as well, and it's been so long.
We scheduled a couple of timesI had to reschedule, so I'm
really thrilled this ishappening right now.
Let's wait Me too, but before wecome to your story, I want to
thank the terrific listeners whosupport the show.
Every month you are keeping theDev Journey lights up.
If you would like to join thisfine crew and help me spend more
(02:25):
time on finding phenomenalguests than editing audio tracks
, please go to our website,devjourneyinfo and click on the
support me on Patreon button.
Even the smallest contributionsare giant steps toward a
sustainable Dev Journey journey.
Thank you, and now back totoday's guest.
(02:46):
So, denzil, as you know, theshow exists to help the listener
understand what your storylooked like and imagine how to
shape their own future.
So, as usual on the show, let'sgo back to your beginnings.
Where would you place the startof your Dev Journey?
Denzil Eden (03:02):
That's a great question and I love the start of
my Dev Journey because itstarted very young.
I was eight years old, I was inthird grade and we had just
taken our first computer classwhere we learned about logo.
And I don't know if you'refamiliar with logo, but it's
this children's programminglanguage with a little turtle
and you tell the turtle where togo, what to do to build a house
(03:24):
, and I fell in love.
That's when I first startedprogramming.
It's actually logo is like thefirst time I used recursion.
It was the first time I learnedhow to make if this, then that
statements and I fell in loveand I clicked instantly for me.
I just understood how to talkto this turtle and I could tell
(03:45):
that my friends didn't get it aswell as I did and it just felt
very magical and I'm lucky.
I grew up in a very tech area ofCalifornia.
I was in the Silicon Valley, mydad was an electrical engineer
and a software engineer, and soI had some exposure to that
early on, but I never thought ofmyself as a software engineer.
(04:05):
That was something that I evenwanted to do until I started
playing around with logo and itjust opened up all of these
doors for me and I startedcoding because of that very
young.
I took that passion with methrough high school to
eventually went to college atMIT and I chose to go there
because I really wanted to studycomputer science, although I
was still very convinced that Ididn't want to be a software
(04:27):
engineer.
I wanted to do something elsewith technology.
So I tried biotech.
I tried out a bunch ofdifferent careers but I kept
coming back to just purebuilding and I ended up doing a
master's at MIT as well.
My master's had a theoreticalfocus in AI, but I did a thesis
project in human computerinteractions and I ended up
building pretty much a precursorto Slack, but for the classroom
(04:51):
.
So it was a collaborative,asynchronous platform, but for
education classrooms, and that'swhat I wrote my thesis on.
It was something that I wish Ihad stuck with, but I really
didn't think I could be afounder.
I thought that being a founderwasn't for me and I wasn't
really sure who the profile was.
But it wasn't something that Iwanted to pursue.
So I ended up going to big techinstead.
(05:11):
I started as a PM at PowerPoint, liked it but missed coding.
So I started teaching computerscience at a community college
and then eventually at SanFrancisco State, just as a guest
lecturer.
And then I still missed codingand so then ended up switching
to being a software engineer atYammer.
But I've always been in theenterprise productivity space,
(05:33):
always in the future of worktools and helping people be more
productive at work,specifically at Microsoft.
But even during that time Iwasn't sure exactly what I
wanted to do.
I wasn't sure if that was whatI should focus on for the rest
of my life.
So I started trying out a bunchof different careers, from law,
from finance to politics,decided to go to business school
and really both broadened myskill set but also give me some
(05:56):
time to figure out what is itthat I want to do with this time
and with my passion and mycuriosities?
And that's really where I cameup with the idea for Smurdy.
I almost reverse engineeredinto it.
I was still trying out differentthings, but I asked myself if I
could only work on one thingfor the rest of my life.
What would it be?
And this was back in 2018.
And AI was interesting, but itwasn't like it is today.
(06:18):
And it's funny.
I used the same pitch for mystartup, smurdy, today that I
did in 2018, but the appetitefor it has changed so
drastically.
But back then I was like, if Ido believe this future is coming
and I want to be part of thatfuture.
And so I started reallybuilding Smurdy for myself,
reverse engineered into what theproduct is today and tried to
(06:38):
raise money in business school.
It didn't work out and then Ikept pitching to the same people
.
I kept iterating my pitch, keptiterating the product and
eventually raised that firstcheck which made it easier to
raise more money, and now I'mworking on it full time.
Tim Bourguignon (06:54):
And congratulations on that.
Thanks, but that's a wholebunch to unpack before we get to
Smurdy.
That's okay for you?
Yes, definitely.
I'd like to come back to thatturtle, the way you talked about
it, saying well, I understoodhow to talk to that turtle.
I love this formulation Becausethat's really something.
When you're trying to talk to acomputer and trying to tell it
(07:18):
to do something and you're notspeaking the right language, it
doesn't click.
As you said, it's so difficultto really Understand the way you
should be talking to it and theway you personally find this
turtle or this computer as atotal and say I understood how
to talk to it.
I love it.
It's really saying, hey, youfound the right language.
Did you realize right away thepower that software could have
(07:43):
and so what the power you hadlearned in talking to that
turtle could bring to your life?
Not yet at that point.
Denzil Eden (07:51):
I don't know if at that point I understood how
transformative of a technologyany sort of software language,
programming language is, but Idid understand that computers
spoke differently than humansdid, and that's what programming
languages allowed us to do,that they allowed us to
communicate what we wanted Totechnology, and I actually think
the greatest thing about a Itoday is that it's made it even
(08:14):
easier for humans to communicatewith technology, because now
technology can communicate theway we communicate.
But back then we needed tolearn how to use these
intermediary bridge languages inorder to be able to allow
software to do what we wanted,and I thought that was really
fascinating.
I was always really into logicand puzzles, and it was just a
puzzle that needed to be solved,and then, as I grew older, I
(08:36):
really understood OK, like theseare the limits of technology,
this is what are the limits ofmy own programming skills, and
try to find connections there.
Tim Bourguignon (08:47):
How is has been your, your relationship with
students?
You mentioned you were ateacher for a bit with students
for whom it didn't click the wayyou did for you and and
bridging that gap and helpingthem understand exactly how that
work.
If it clicked for you from theget go love at first sight I
(09:07):
would almost say how did youbridge that gap and build this
relation with students?
Denzil Eden (09:11):
That's a great question, and teaching was like
such a great experience for mebecause it really showed me that
everyone just learns in adifferent way.
No skill is unknowable.
It is just about finding theway that your brain works, your
thinking patterns work, andtrying to find alignment.
And so, for me, I really gaveme a great perspective on what
is wrong with education today,and also that no one can say
(09:36):
that they're not a coder becauseyou have the skills, you have
the ability to think.
It's just about figuring outhow to make your brain talk, the
way that computer brains talk.
Tim Bourguignon (09:46):
So do you have some, some, some techniques,
when it's not clicking, withpeople to find the way that they
need to hear it, so that clicks?
Denzil Eden (09:56):
I don't know if it's necessarily about like how
you hear it, but I will say itis about practice, because the
more you do different exercises,you'll start to recognize
patterns between how you solvecertain problems in the computer
science space and Java, andyou'll find the most problems
that you're seeing in theclassroom setting are just
variations of the same sameconundrum.
(10:19):
And then you just need to startrecognizing OK, like this is
how these are the parametersthat the function needs.
This is how functions areusually structured, and so I
think it's practice more thananything else, practicing to
think the way that computersthink and learning what they
need.
Tim Bourguignon (10:35):
OK, so really using it, using it, using it,
and at some point you will seeand it will click.
Denzil Eden (10:41):
Exactly, and I think that's true today too,
with all of these tools that areout there and all of this, all
of the hype around promptengineering.
It is about practicing learninghow to prompt these models.
It's learning about how AImodels think and understanding
how you can, like, adapt yourown thinking to match that.
Tim Bourguignon (11:02):
Isn't there a difference though, in such that
a programming language is isvery, very Cartesian and
definite.
Either you have the right wayto ask or you don't, and there's
no two ways on all of those, nothree ways to do the same thing
.
In a way, crafting your promptswith chad, gpt or with the LMS
(11:26):
we have nowadays, you canachieve the same results with
very different ways, and sodabbling into it quite often
leads to some results as well,and it's not a black and white
result.
It's very shades of gray,except if you add some
parameters etc.
But but if you stick to the, tothe prompting, it's really
shades of gray.
Harder in computer science todouble your way into the, how
(11:51):
the computer is supposed to, tobe talked to.
Denzil Eden (11:54):
I think that's a great point.
I agree with you.
Like with a traditionalprogramming language, there is
only one right way to talk tosoftware, to whatever you're
trying to get done with promptengineering.
Of course, you can asksomething in multiple ways and
you'll get different results,and you should probably
experiment so you can see whatparameters lead to what results.
(12:14):
But at the same time, I dobelieve that there's like an
optimal way to do prompting, andwe just haven't fully
discovered that yet.
I think five years from nowthere will be textbooks that
will say like this is exactlyhow you should be prompting this
model specifically, and I thinkthat precision will come.
But right now we're all in thisexploratory phase, trying to
(12:36):
understand what is the bestlanguage.
Tim Bourguignon (12:40):
Oh, we are still a baby phase of asking
questions.
I'm exploring a lot of midjourney in the past days and
weeks and understanding somepatterns and how to have to ask
questions.
This is, this is fantastic.
This is an endeavor in itselfand indeed, when you find
something that really works andyou can reproduce and is really
(13:02):
consistency, oh, now I reallylearned something.
That's very gratifying.
Denzil Eden (13:08):
I agree it's an adventure and it's really fun.
Tim Bourguignon (13:12):
It is so.
You said obviously MIT,obviously computer science, even
though you don't want to becomea hardcore software engineer,
you said but but still it had tobe in SIFT3 engineer.
Did you have doubts in whichdirection to take inside the CS
(13:32):
space?
Denzil Eden (13:34):
No, I was always interested in AI, so I knew that
I wanted to do my theoreticalmasters in that, and then I
always knew I wanted to pursuecomputer science.
There was no other major thatappealed to me.
I just wasn't sure what Iwanted to do with that major,
and so that was what was mostconfusing for me.
And then, in terms of choosingwhich university go to, I
(13:56):
actually wasn't sure I wanted togo to MIT, and then I visited
during their campus previewweekend, which happens in April,
and it was the most fun weekendI had ever had in my life up
until that point, and itconvinced me that this was the
right place for me to go to.
And so it all really just fellinto place, and I just needed to
(14:17):
experience it once to know itwas the right fit.
Tim Bourguignon (14:20):
Okay, was that weekend representative for the
years you did after?
Denzil Eden (14:26):
Yes, actually, it really was.
Tim Bourguignon (14:27):
Okay.
Denzil Eden (14:29):
It was very so.
I think MIT has this motto,which is work hard, play hard,
and even that weekend was verymuch like extremely intense but
very fun at the same time, and Ithink it just it does a really
good job of showing you whatyour college experience could be
like.
It's all student run.
Obviously, there's likeadministration overseeing
(14:49):
everything, but students reallyplan all of their events and
it's just 24 seven for threedays.
Okay, and the rest of thecurriculum is 24 seven for four
years, five years, but it's alittle bit less recreational
only, but I mean even, but it'sthe same level of intensity.
Tim Bourguignon (15:08):
Okay, that's good, that's good.
It's really a hard or a verythin line to to meet during
those open doors to really showthe the values and what the
school is made or the college ismade of, and then have the same
feeling afterwards and not feellied to.
It's really hard, it's a veryhard balance.
Denzil Eden (15:31):
I personally I'm obviously biased, but I thought
MIT did a really great job and Iactually went with a friend of
mine from high school.
We both went and she did nothave as good of an experience
and she did not end up going toMIT and so I think it does do a
good job for prospectivestudents to come see what the
atmosphere is like, see what theculture is like, and then have
them decide like is this for youor not?
Tim Bourguignon (15:53):
Yeah, indeed, indeed, indeed.
Then, moving on, when you spokeabout your theoretical
stereotypical thesis, you justsaid I wish I'd stayed with this
topic.
What do you mean by that?
Denzil Eden (16:06):
Yeah, so it's actually not with.
So the way that my master's wasbroken down I could take
classes and concentrated in aspace and then I could do a
thesis project in any space thatI wanted, ideally with
complementary skills to mytheoretical thesis.
Well, my theoreticalconcentration wasn't AI, but
back then it was.
(16:26):
Machine learning was there, butit was still early.
I didn't really like pursuethat as much.
I was still doing more of likea high level.
AI 101 theoretical concentrationand then my application thesis
project was in human computerinteractions and I built this
platform called Nora no onerevises alone and it was
(16:46):
literally slack, but forclassrooms and it was for
helping students asynchronouslycollaborate on assignments
during the school day, and I, inhindsight and even then, could
have turned it into an actualproduct and business, but I
didn't do it and I don't knowwhy.
(17:07):
I just felt very I guess I wasvery afraid of the idea of
striking out on my own andbuilding a company with a
product that I already had, withusers who were willing to pay
for it, and I think it was just.
It was a different time really,because I feel like
universities today have a lotmore programs around
entrepreneurship and MIT thandid, but it wasn't a big part of
(17:31):
the campus culture and if I goto campus now, it's so different
.
There are so many programsaround.
How do you start a startup, howdo you raise money, how do you
start building something peoplewant, and so that's really what
I meant.
I had this thing that I really,even in hindsight now, could
have created a real companyaround, but it was just so hard
for me to grasp that that wassomething I could do and that
(17:53):
this was enough of a startingpoint to get started.
Tim Bourguignon (17:57):
Okay, makes more sense.
So you were not ready for thestartup growing experience yet,
yeah, okay, and does thisproduct still has its place in
the world 10 years later?
No, timing is everything.
Denzil Eden (18:12):
And even then it was a little bit too early for
that asynchronous collaborationplatform, but I definitely think
there was still a lot of valuethat it was adding, especially
in the classroom setting.
But today there's so manyalternatives there's Slack,
there's Miro, there's so manydifferent platforms that you can
use to get that same experience.
Honestly, figma could evenreplace what I built, and so I
(18:36):
think it had its time.
But that's time that time haspassed Okay, so no regrets.
Tim Bourguignon (18:42):
No regrets so then you brushed over your your
first years PM at PowerPoint,then think, yemmer.
Then there was one in between.
I think how long did that phaselast?
Or go until you had this rebootof saying what do I want to do
with my life?
Denzil Eden (19:03):
Yeah, I was working for three years a little bit
more than that and then Idecided to go to business school
and business school was reallythat period of reflection.
Tim Bourguignon (19:13):
So how did you three years go?
I mean starting the three yearsentering the, the workforce
with big air quotes or industryor big tech, as you mentioned it
.
How did that go?
How did it relate to the idealyou had in your mind?
How did that work?
And then, how do these threeyears evolve into you
questioning this and say, well,maybe I should go back to
(19:34):
business school or whatever.
I'm very interested in thosetwo.
To pals yeah, no, it's a greatquestion because I don't think
that enough people talk about,like what that feels like when
you first go into the workforce.
Denzil Eden (19:47):
It was jarring for me.
It was not what I expected.
I wasn't sure if I loved my joband I didn't know why.
And it turns out that I reallydid like my job.
I was just hungry for more andI just felt I wasn't being
challenged enough.
I didn't love my commute, whichis so funny now to talk about,
but my commute was terrible backthen.
It was an hour because I livedin San Francisco.
(20:09):
I wanted the lifestyle of beingyoung and happy with my friends
all the time, but then I wascommuting to Mountain View and
with traffic that would take anhour each way, I just felt
surprised at what I did like andalso surprised at what I didn't
like.
I didn't realize how importantthe lifestyle aspect would be to
(20:29):
me.
I didn't realize how much Iwould miss coding and actually
building something from likespecifications versus writing
the specifications, and I didn'tunderstand how different those
skill sets were.
I didn't really understand atthat time how in front of was to
understand users and becustomer obsessed, even though I
was working in product and itwas.
I was learning so much but atthe same time not appreciating
(20:53):
what I was learning, and so it'sfunny to look at it with
hindsight.
And then, because I missedcoding so much, I started
teaching computer science and Irealized that I liked teaching,
but it wasn't something that Iwanted to do as my full-time
livelihood, so I didn't want togo back to school to become a
(21:14):
professor and so I startedlooking at other jobs and I
think my number one priority atthat time had been finding
something that was in SanFrancisco.
So that was my number onepriority.
And then I was lucky enough tointerview at Yammer, which was a
acquired startup at Microsoftand their headquarters was in
San Francisco.
So that worked out really wellon that specification and they
(21:36):
were looking for softwareengineers.
So it worked out in that wayand I still got to stand at the
Microsoft umbrella, so it was aneasy transition and so it
worked out so well foreverything that I thought I
wanted at that time.
So I switched to being asoftware engineer at Yammer and
I actually really liked it.
I liked being the one buildingand seeing my changes get
(21:57):
deployed into the product andseeing how users use them.
It was just such a satisfyingfeeling.
So I was like, okay, I do likethis part of it.
But then, a year into that, Iran into that same feeling of
like okay, but I want more.
I want more challenges, I wantmore to do.
I don't know if this is where Iwant to be for the next five or
(22:18):
10 years.
I just felt really hungry butalso really lost.
That's why I decided thatbusiness school was the right
choice for me.
But it's so funny I remembereven now, when I decided to go
to business school, the head ofengineering at Yammer, who I
like never worked with but Iknew of, sat me down and said
okay, I see how hungry you are,I see that you're like pursuing
(22:41):
other things and I don't thinkyou need to stay at Yammer.
This is not a pitch for you tostay at Yammer.
I can help you work at anystartup that you want, any place
where you can like build theskill set, but I feel like you
should really go and buildinstead.
That was the first time anyonehad said to me like going to
business school was the wrongchoice, and I really look back
(23:01):
on it today very fondly becauseI understand what he was trying
to say.
He was saying there are so manyways to get the same skill set
and to feed that passion ofwanting to build and learn at an
accelerated rate.
I think it really stuck with meabout wanting to go to a
different startup, like startinga startup going somewhere
younger and smaller.
(23:22):
I think I just thought aboutthat a lot while I was at
business school.
That was my experience workingfull-time for the first time.
Tim Bourguignon (23:31):
It makes a lot of sense.
How did you come up to the ideaof going back with their quotes
again to business school anddecide on business school that
business school was the rightthing for you at that time?
Denzil Eden (23:43):
That's a great question.
I actually applied to a lot ofdifferent grad schools.
I applied to law school, Iapplied to a school for masters
of public policy.
I was confused in a lot of waysabout what I wanted.
The great thing about tech isthat it can be applied to any
industry.
There are law tech, there isfinance tech.
(24:04):
There is so many different waysyou can apply technology to
different industries.
I was like, okay, I can bringthis skill set to any space and
any career that I want.
I just have to figure out whatI want to do.
I kind of glossed over this,but in my working days I was
actually interning on the sideat a lot of other things as well
.
I was working for a KamalaHarris Senate campaign.
(24:27):
I was volunteering for them andhelping them with fundraising.
I was interning with a criminallawyer and trying to understand
if I wanted to go into criminallaw, and this was actually my
third time trying out a lawinternship.
I had already worked in patentlaw.
Before that I tried a corporatelaw internship as well.
I was confused and I wascurious.
(24:49):
I wanted to try a lot ofdifferent things and figure out
what was right for me.
Tim Bourguignon (24:55):
I love the experimental approach Really.
Okay, I don't know what I want,so let's try this, let's try
that, let's try that, let's trythat and see what sticks.
Very entrepreneurial.
Denzil Eden (25:07):
Definitely.
It's so funny because I neverlooked at that skill or that the
mindset as entrepreneurial.
But now that I look at my lifein hindsight I can say very
clearly well, those areentrepreneurial skills.
That is part of it, thatexperimental learning by doing
which is not for everyone.
Some people are actually reallygreat at looking at other
(25:28):
people's experiences and otherpeople's mistakes and learning
from that.
I'm not, and I wish I wasbetter at that, but I am very
much a experimenter, trier,iterator.
Tim Bourguignon (25:40):
Which you need nowadays, so that's fine.
So I've reached the point intime where Smarties started to
evolve in your mind.
Denzil Eden (25:48):
Exactly.
Tim Bourguignon (25:49):
So can you tell us the birth story of Smarties
before it became the company?
How did you come up with theidea?
How did you did that?
Maybe scratch an itch you hador really started to evolve into
, from maybe just an idea or ahobby into hey, this could be
more.
And what the first steps looklike.
Denzil Eden (26:11):
Yes, definitely, it's very clear in my mind.
So it happened during my secondyear of business school, maybe
a little bit during the firstyear I'd all.
I arrived at business school, Iliked it, I was open to trying
out other careers, and then Ikept finding myself coming back
to tech and I said that I didn'twant to pivot out of technology
(26:32):
and so what can I do withtechnology?
And HBS was really the firsttime I felt supported in
entrepreneurship and pursuingthat as a journey.
There were so many classesaround it.
I still think HBS is verytheoretical when it comes to
entrepreneurship, compared tosome other business schools that
are, I think, a little bit moreapplication heavy, and I know
(26:53):
they're changing that.
They're trying to become moreapplication and experimental
focus, but at the time it wasstill more theoretical, I think.
But it was my first exposure tothat as an experience, and one
of my closest friends at abusiness school had been a
founder before, and so I reallygot to see what that journey had
been like for him and he wantedto start another startup right
(27:15):
away, and so it was exciting tosee the world through his eyes
and that lens and it definitelyencouraged me to think about
that as a career path for myself.
And so then I started askingmyself okay, if I could only
work on one thing for the restof my life, what space do I want
to be in?
And AI had always beensomething that I was really
excited about.
I wanted to help be part ofthat journey of making that a
(27:36):
reality, and back then it wasstill very much machine learning
, natural language processing,nothing like what we have today
with LLMs, but it was stillsomething that was rapidly
advancing and so I was like Iwant to be in that space, I want
to see how I can get into that.
And then I started asking aboutquestions in my own life,
problems in my own life, and atthat time I really vividly
(27:58):
remember I was having anxietyattacks like pretty much every
day.
I just felt so overwhelmed witheverything that was in my life,
both my personal commitments, myprofessional commitments,
everything that I was trying tobalance, and I had this
realization that more than 25%of the things that I was doing
every day could easily beautomated with existing
(28:20):
technology.
And I remember looking it upand I think a lot of corporate
knowledge workers at that timehad like 30%.
Today I would say it's about60% of the work that we do every
day could easily be automatedwith existing technology, and
the big problem there and whythat wasn't being solved with
technology, was that none of oursoftware was able to talk to
(28:44):
each other.
We had to manually handle everysoftware individually.
Everything was in thesedifferent silos, and so I was on
this kick of OK, everything hasan API.
Apis can talk to each other.
Apis are programming languages.
Apis are languages for howsoftware speaks to other
software, and all I needed to dowas create this hub that
(29:06):
allowed these APIs to connect,and I should be able to talk to
this hub, and so that's howSmarty really came up as an idea
in my mind.
I had this vision around thisconversational web operating
system where I tell Smarty whatI need to do, smarty figures out
the intent, what APIs arerelevant, and then connects it
all together and makes it work,and that's how I came up with
(29:29):
the idea, and I started buildingSmarty as a chat bot, just
something that I was chatting to.
I would tell Smarty things thatwere on my plate, and if Smarty
could automate it, it would,and that's how I got started.
That's the pitch that I gave tomy first investor.
I didn't really understandanything about how to pitch, how
(29:49):
this is too big of an idea andyou need a niche to get started.
You need a real pain point, youneed a real customer.
It was definitely a learningjourney for me, but that's how I
got started.
Tim Bourguignon (30:00):
And it is awesome, it was very long-winded
.
No, no, that's.
It's really cool.
I was really thinking whatwould be the analogy with
existing tools.
It's kind of an overlay overZapier, which has the connectors
, but not this AI part, where itfigures out on its own what it
(30:21):
should be doing.
You really have to tell them,but it's not just that.
So, yeah, interesting.
And this started in 2018, isn'tit so?
Before chatGPT emerged, or atleast to the public, before
everybody understood that thisis happening?
(30:42):
How was it to work in LLM backthen versus now?
Denzil Eden (30:47):
Yeah, it was a different way of thinking about
AI.
It was very much around I wasusing an open AI API for natural
language processing, but thatisn't what chatGPT is today.
Then I had these goals aroundcreating machine learning models
, but everything that hashappened in the last couple of
years has completely changedthat Not just for me, but for
people who were machine learningexperts working at companies
(31:10):
building these models, it is abrave new world, but not a
surprising one.
Even back then, I had that samevision that LLMs make even
easier today, but it's just adifferent methodology to get
there.
Tim Bourguignon (31:24):
Did you change some part of your stack after
LLMs came out?
Denzil Eden (31:34):
No, I would call it AI 1.0.
We had that before and todaywe're still using that, but now
we're layering in AI 2.0 withall of the language learning
models and also large actionmodels.
Really, this is a new time forhow the AI works, but in terms
(31:54):
of the actual infrastructurethat you need to build a product
like Smarty, all of that staysthe same the APIs that were
connected to you, how those APIsconnect together, how you as a
user communicate with Smarty andwhat information you need to
specify all of that stays thesame.
In some ways, I feel like itwas great that I had that period
of building up thatinfrastructure and now I get to
(32:16):
just play around with how the AIat the top level works for how
users interface with Smarty.
Tim Bourguignon (32:24):
Who do you define as your competitors?
Are those the Zappiers whichare trying to add AI on top of
the services now, or is that adifferent space?
Denzil Eden (32:35):
It's a different space, and so I can almost see
Zappier or IFTHT IFTHT, this andthat being APIs that we
integrate with.
It's really not even acompetitor because they are
really providing the tools fromcreating these very intricate
connections, and I can seeSmarty even using those
intricate connections betweenthese different APIs.
(32:55):
Our competitors are more in thefuture of work tool space, so
tools that are creatingcountering solutions, tools that
are creating email managementsolutions, contact management
solutions, and these are toolsthat you're using at work.
But a lot of our users haveproduct fatigue because they
don't want to switch between allof these different niche
productivity tools.
They instead want an all-in-oneplatform that handles all of
(33:18):
their favorite productivityfeatures, and so we're more in
that space, and so I would saySmarty's biggest value
proposition is first, thisall-in-one platform, trying to
integrate with everything acrossyour administrative stack and
right now we're just on top of GSuite but everything from your
email to your Google contacts,to your Google calendars, across
multiple accounts.
So your professional accounts,your personal accounts, just
(33:40):
having all of that accessible inone place.
So that's our top valueproposition.
Our second one is really aroundthese conversational commands,
so being able to say somethinglike coffee with Tim at Blue
Bottle in San Francisco at 2 pmLondon time and having that
calendar event sent with theright time zone with the right
location, just with keyboardshortcuts and conversational
(34:00):
commands.
So that's our second biggestvalue proposition.
And the third one is using AIto have recommendations around
when is the best time to getsomething done, what is the best
way to plan your schedule?
Brain-dumping tasks into Smartyand having Smarty AI
autoschedule it into your day orinto your weeks and so really
helping you make sure you neverdrop the ball.
And I think that last valueproposition is really where most
(34:22):
of our competitors are.
So there are a lot of toolsthat are helping you use AI to
autoschedule your day, andthat's where our biggest
competitors are.
Tim Bourguignon (34:32):
Okay, makes sense.
How did you tackle the problemof trusting the AI?
I mean, if I'm just conversingwith AI and I trust this AI,
he's going to create the rightappointments, send those to my
counterparts.
It's going to be a differenttime zone and it's going to do
it on its own and correctly.
(34:52):
I would double-check everythingit's doing.
Denzil Eden (34:55):
Yeah, no, of course , and that's actually one of the
biggest things that we tried tokeep in mind while building out
Smarty.
So I don't know if you rememberXAI it came out before 2018.
It was this assistant, amy.
You would CC Amy on your emailsand then Amy would just do
things for you, and the problemwith that experience was exactly
(35:19):
what you said that you werelike what is Amy going to do?
How is Amy going to do this?
What if Amy does it the wrongway?
And so, really, our goal withSmarty is not to create this
black box around how things aregetting done, but instead to
give you the right commands atthe right time so you know
exactly what is being done andhow it's being done.
(35:39):
And so, instead of you justdelegating tasks away to Smarty,
it's really taking theseworkflows like switching to my
calendar app, dragging anddropping, adding this contact to
that calendar invite.
Instead of doing that at thatcrucial step where you have all
of these mundane workflows thatyou have to do, smarty is
specifically replacing thatexperience with a single command
(36:00):
where you control everything.
You control exactly the time,you control exactly the people.
So really finding that balancebetween giving you the right
control versus delegating themundane parts of product
switching, figuring out like howdoes this work, things like
that?
Tim Bourguignon (36:17):
Okay, a hard balance to find, but when you
find it, I really trust it toreally free up your mind, free
up your calendar, doing stufffor you, but I'm still yeah, I
can see that you're like I don'tbelieve that you can fully take
(36:37):
away that fear, and I thinkit's.
Denzil Eden (36:38):
You have to try the product.
But it's really.
You are in control, you triggerthe commands and you know
exactly how the command is goingto work.
So that confidence, I think,and that trust, builds up over
time.
Tim Bourguignon (36:51):
Okay, I'll have to give it a go.
Then you mentioned a couple oftimes you were searching for
something to work on for therest of your life.
How does that collides maybedoesn't collide with the stellar
growth of AI right now?
Will there still be a need forhow to put it a tool that is
(37:20):
deep enough in terms of youtelling it what it should be
doing and really helping it,versus, at some point, some AI
able to discover that on theirown and basically over patting
your tool on the right and justdoing it without somebody
teaching them that?
Do you see what I mean?
Denzil Eden (37:41):
Yes, I do, but I still think in that scenario,
there will always be aninterface that you're
interacting with as the user,and, regardless of what the AI
is doing, there's something thatyou are interacting with as the
user, and I want to be part ofbuilding that platform, that
interface, whatever it is.
This doesn't have to be smarty,and so I think one of the big
(38:01):
things as a founder is you'llhave a lot of ideas, but finding
something that you can really,that you're really committed to
in the long run, that's reallyimportant, and for me, even if
smarty fails this concept, thisvision of what that interface
looks like, someone is going tocreate it, and if I'm not going
to be doing it at smarty, then Iwant to go find a competitor or
(38:24):
another company that's workingon that same vision and go work
for them, and so that's reallyhow it aligns for me.
Tim Bourguignon (38:34):
And that is awesome.
It really makes a lot of sensewhen you describe, or when we
talked about, the product pieceand the trust piece on top of
the AI.
So really, this is somethingthat I don't see AI solving for
us.
What's happening in thebackground?
Yes, maybe, but this whole howhumans or tailoring for humans,
is really a hard nut to crack,and this I don't expect the UI
(38:56):
to crack that in the near future.
So that's where your tool ormaybe another, as you're saying
really has to shine and comeinto play.
Denzil Eden (39:08):
I definitely think it's.
We're really early, we're notsure what that's gonna look like
, but it's exciting to be partof that journey that shapes it.
Tim Bourguignon (39:16):
Very cool.
Coming back to your students,was there something, some kind
of piece of advice, stuff youtold them again and again to
help them kickstart their career, start on the right track and
maybe get a glimpse on what youwere doing or something else?
Is there such such an advice?
Denzil Eden (39:38):
Yeah, it's a great question.
It's actually something I'vebeen thinking about a lot
recently, especially with therapid buildup of AI tools that
are coming out there.
I think AI literacy issomething that is becoming more
and more important than everbefore, and that doesn't mean
understanding how AI worksbehind the scenes.
It's about understanding how touse AI as a tool to improve
(40:01):
your own job, whatever you aredoing, and it's something that I
am telling folks today who areinterested.
Ai is in such an early stagethat the next five, ten years
are really going to tell us whatthat industry is going to look
like, and so the more AIliteracy that you can build up
today, the better, and I thinkthe best way to do that is by
following your passions, yourhobbies, and so you said you
(40:23):
were working with mid-journey.
If you're an artist, if you liketo draw, if you like creating
art, then I think mid-journey islike such a great tool to start
playing around with your ownart and also seeing how it
responds to art, and I think, ailiteracy.
In order to develop that.
The best way to do it is tofigure out what are your hobbies
, what are your passions.
If you like writing, playaround with chat, tbt or other
writing language, large languagemodels, if you like composing
(40:46):
music or if you like payingmusic, play around with an AI
tool in the music scene andunderstand how to prompt it, how
to use it to create somethingnew.
Because I think as you learnthose skills, you'll be able to
become an expert.
Because anyone today can becomean expert in AI because it's
just so new, so early, and themore time you invest in it today
, the better you'll be.
And the best way to invest timeis to by doing it through a
(41:08):
hobby or something that you'repassionate about.
I think that's the same adviceI would have given my students
10 years ago in these classes.
If you're interested intechnology, technology can be
applied to any space, to anyindustry.
Even back then, if you wereinterested in music, you could
try to build a piano usingsoftware.
You could try to build I don'tknow like a drawing tool or an
(41:29):
art tool using software.
I think there is somethingreally powerful about being able
to align your passions withyour interests and your goals
and your learning skills,because the more you can tie in
something you're trying to learnto something that you enjoy
doing, the faster and more funI'll be.
Tim Bourguignon (41:48):
Amen to that and I love that your answer digs
into exploration again, sayinghey, do something with it and
try what happens.
And this is exactly the samediscourse you had at the
beginning of the show, talkingabout how you went at your life.
So it's all full circles.
Denzil Eden (42:07):
I think life, you know yellow, you only live once.
So you need to exploreeverything and figure out what
is what brings true to you.
Tim Bourguignon (42:18):
Then go explore Fantastic.
Where would be the best placeto continue the discussion with
you?
Denzil Eden (42:27):
Please find me on LinkedIn.
I'm Denzil Eden and I lovetalking to people about their
careers, their journeys, theirinterest in technology, ai,
literacy, and I'd love to giveanyone a personalized onboarding
onto Smarty, and then you canalways try out Smarty at
wwwsmartyai.
We're an early product, we havesome customers and we're always
(42:48):
looking for more people to giveus feedback.
Tim Bourguignon (42:51):
Then you heard her let's go there, anything
else.
Denzil Eden (42:56):
No, that's it.
That's me in a nutshell.
Tim Bourguignon (42:58):
Fantastic, denzil, it was really fun.
Thank you so much for sharingyour life and for the good love
we had.
I had a fun four times I hadfun too.
Denzil Eden (43:05):
thank you so much for having me.
Tim Bourguignon (43:07):
Like was, and this has been another episode of
Devil's Journey.
It was each other next week.
Bye, bye.
Thanks a lot for tuning in.
I hope you have enjoyed thisweek's episode.
If you like the show, pleaseshare, rate and review.
It helps more listenersdiscover those stories.
You can find the links to allthe platforms the show appears
(43:30):
on on our website devjourneyinfoslash subscribe.
Talk to you soon.
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