86. Josh Payne⏐Coframe: The AI-Powered Future of Digital Experiences

Episode Transcript
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Josh Payne (00:00):
The way that we see the internet going with this
advent of very powerful AI isit's going to become much more
personalized and adaptive.
There's two sides of this.
There's the what we as peopleexperience on the internet, and
then there's the business side,what businesses want out of
these digital experiences.
On our side, for the most part,the internet is fairly static.

(00:24):
It's not very contextual, it'snot very personalized.
It's a little bit hard toconceptualize this when you
don't have a clear picture ofwhat it could be Like before
people had the iPhone.
They didn't know that theywanted the iPhone kind of
situation.
But I think the closest proxythat we could make to this and
we can argue certainly on theimpact on society, but social
media and search too, I wouldsay highly contextual, highly

(00:45):
adaptive and extremely effectiveat keeping people engaged.
Now is that a good thing forsociety?
We could certainly argue aboutthat.
But I think, by and large,making the internet more
contextual, we would see in somecases it would also maybe have
this negative effect on peoplewould be wasting their time and

(01:36):
so on and so forth.
But what I get excited aboutare the cases it would also
maybe have this like negativeeffect on people would be
wasting their time and so on andso forth.
But, like, what I get excitedabout are the cases where it
makes people more productive,more effective, more informed
right.

Klara (01:45):
You're coming into a new website or experience and it's
able to communicate to the GrandSlam Journey podcast, where we
discuss the Grand Slam journeyof our lives sports, business,
technology and, in today'sepisode with Josh Payne, a path
from music to scaling startupscentered around technology, ai,
gen, ai, crypto and a bunch morecool stuff.

(02:06):
I'm going to keep this introshort because I provide plenty
of introduction for Josh and hisbackground during the episode.
If you enjoyed this episode,please feel free to provide a
review on Apple Podcasts,spotify or any other platform
you use to listen to thisepisode.
This episode is also availablein video on YouTube.

(02:27):
Thank you for tuning in and Ihope you enjoy the lesson.
Hello, josh, welcome to theGrand Slam Journey podcast.
How are you?

Josh Payne (02:34):
Doing great.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's a pleasure.

Klara (02:37):
I've been super excited.
I've been studying yourbackground actually a connection
of ours, send me your profilewhich I rarely accept.
I've been diving into yourbackground actually a connection
of ours, send me your profile,which I rarely accept but I've
been diving into your background, including listening to what
you're creating, what you havecreated and a few podcasts you
have been on, and I have so manyquestions that I feel like this

(02:57):
could be a half a day episode,but I'm really excited.
Before we kick off, I know yourecently came back from an awful
work trip Cannes in France,which is probably one of the
worst cities to go to for a worktrip for the Cannes Lions event
.
How was that?

Josh Payne (03:15):
I mean it was just awful.
The truth is, I can't recommendit enough.
It was such an amazing time.
It was just one of those eventswhere you meet so many
interesting people and it's notlike you're meeting them just
randomly and it's in a worksetting.
It's like they're friendly.
It's about really makinggenuine connections, getting to
know people.
Super fun event.
There's actually this reallyincredible sub event there

(03:38):
called Sports Beach, which I wasable to attend and I felt you
would have totally loved it.

Klara (03:42):
That sounds interesting.
What is that about?

Josh Payne (03:45):
So Sports Beach was put on by this agency called
Stagwell, and the way that canis organized is they have a
bunch of different what are theycalled beaches which are
sectioned off parts of theactual beach, and different
agencies will have their ownsections.
I don't know how much pay Ihave to pay to to have one,
probably six to seven figures orsomething crazy but one of the

(04:05):
ones was SportsBeach and theyhosted a bunch of really
interesting kind of just likeathletes giving talks there
about their work and athleticbrands and that kind of stuff.
I was able to kind of take apeek and see a couple of the
talks really, really interestingstuff People, of course,
talking a lot about sportsmarketing, but also influencer
marketing that was a huge pieceof it and how people can

(04:28):
leverage their credibility andfame for interesting new
ventures.

Klara (04:32):
Nice and, before we dive into your beginning, all the
background.
Actually, how was the event foryou?
I know you went there for workas the founder of CoFrame, so
I'm sure you had many meetingsset up with marketing CMOs.
How was that, when it comes toreception of what you're
building and building thenetwork and spreading the word
about Coframe and what you allare doing?

Josh Payne (04:54):
Yeah, it was really great, Such a special experience
.
I met a ton of reallyinteresting partners both on the
brand side and also on theagency side.
One really funny story actuallyfrom it was actually at
SportsBeach where this happened.
I was hanging out with apartner at a big consulting firm
and they have a bunch of reallybig companies and brands they
work with and we've beenexploring working together.

(05:17):
They've brought us into acouple of things so far a couple
of like their companies thatthey work with and we were just
talking about different specificcompanies that might make sense
to get in touch with on theirside.
And one of the ones a reallyreally big retailer, he brought
up and I was like, oh, that'sinteresting, we're actually
already talking with them, we'rein touch with them.

(05:39):
In fact, I have a demo that Imade for them and I pulled up
the demo and it was of theirwebsite and our system, creating
a variation of their website,and the variation was basically
like a gift finder for Father'sDay, a gift finder quiz.

Klara (05:53):
Nice.

Josh Payne (05:54):
And he like stops me midway through that and he's
like there's no way.
Like was that already on thesite?
And I was like no, our systemmade it.
He's like we've been workingwith them for the past X amount
of time and this was like theoutcome of our engagement was
like a recommendation to do this, to do this thing that you were
actually showing me live on thesite a gift finder quiz and

(06:17):
it's just kind of like amazingvalidation.
And he pulls out his phone.
He's like I got to text the CTOof this company.
He texts the cto you gotta meetco-frame.
Um, that was super fun.

Klara (06:31):
yeah, I love when that happens, that you are creating
something they already thinkabout without you knowing and
then being able to show them andbring it to life, which I'm
gonna jump into a little bityour intro and I want you to add
a highlight but I've beenreally impressed by all you have
achieved in our building.
So, as the founder of CallFrame, which is one of the most
powerful ways to increase webconversions, and I want to dive

(06:53):
into kind of how you all aredoing it with AI already driven
millions in incremental revenuefor some of the world's largest
brands like OpenAI, theEconomist and many more,
creating real ROI withbleeding-edge AI.
You previously co-foundedAutograph with NFL legend Tom
Brady, which is a unicorn,backed by Anderson Horowitz and

(07:16):
Kleiner Perkins.
So I'm curious about thatbackground.
Also, access Bell, which wasacquired by a huge conglomerate
data group.
You created the first majorautonomous agent for code
generation, gpt Migrate,previously number one on GitHub.
Co-created Coffee, authored 20peer review papers and patents.

(07:38):
You attended Stanford University, where you're still in your
free time, which I don't knowwhere you found lecture and
teach generative AI.
You're an angel investor in 20plus early stage technology
companies and, on top of allthis, you're also a musician.
You play at the SF Philharmonicand SF Civic Symphony.
You are a drummer, composer andproducer of two jazz albums and

(08:03):
composed an orchestral piecethat is played by the Stanford
Symphony Orchestra, which Iactually listened to just before
this episode.
So all of that to say.
Number one what do you want toadd?
And number two, how the heckhave you achieved all of this in
this?
I find still very short lifethat you have.
Like, what's the secret, josh?

Josh Payne (08:25):
oh, my goodness, well, I appreciate, I appreciate
this.
Uh, a ton, you really, youreally uh, um, did your homework
.
Um, let's see, I don't know, Ijust kind of just do what is
interesting to me.
To be honest, I think a lot ofpeople like to map out the
specifics of how they're goingto accomplish xyz thing, and
what I found to be the thingthat keeps me going and and and

(08:47):
energized, which is like reallyimportant piece of this, is just
maintaining that energy isworking on things that you like
genuinely find interesting, and,of course, that gives you the
fuel to to put in the hours andput in the work.
Um, but but doing that, likewith without that level of, you
know, intrinsic motivation andpassion, I don't know how anyone

(09:08):
would do it.
So I guess if I had any thoughton how to do more things in
life, it would be to do thethings that you actually find
interesting.
There's this really interestingit was an interview, I guess,
with Elon Musk and they'reasking him what are you telling
your kids to focus on, like toinvest your time into, and learn

(09:29):
and so on, and in the age of AIthat's coming and that's a
really interesting kind of topicthat a lot of people are
discussing right now, like whenyou were in an era where AI is
able to do all the knowledgework that humans are doing today
.
Where are people going to finda place?
And this is like fresh off thepress I think this interview was

(09:49):
like a week ago or two and he'sjust like you just got to do
what you find you're passionateabout, and that's the only way
to really keep yourself going isto do that, and we might reach
a point at some point down theroad where AI is able to do all
these things and maybe humansare less useful than we are
today, but doing things that yougenerally find interesting is,

(10:10):
I think, kind of a cure for that.

Klara (10:12):
Are you one of the people that, once you kind of get that
intrinsic motivation andpassion that you don't need to
sleep, do you sleep four or fivehours a day?

Josh Payne (10:22):
No, I need my sleep.
I mean I got less sleep thelast couple nights, but I
usually try to get you knoweight to nine hours each night.
I find that having more sleepmakes me more like net net.
I'm more effective because I'mable to like just operate at a
higher level, like if I haveless sleep, the whole day is
ruined.

Klara (10:39):
Nice, so you're still able to achieve everything you
have.
So I want to dive into severalof the things that I have
mentioned, but before we do, I'mcurious about what was your
upbringing.
I've also read that you mostlygrew up in Texas, and who have
influenced you, or what are someof the themes you came across
in your upbringing that you saw,perhaps led you to finding your

(11:01):
passion and entrepreneurship?

Josh Payne (11:04):
I did grow up in Texas.
I grew up in a militarybackground.
My dad was actually an athlete,which is really cool.
I feel like I disappointed hima little bit by not becoming an
athlete, but I have amazingparents and they're super
supportive.
I wanted to be a musician,actually growing up, and
obviously music doesn't reallypay the bills, so I was somewhat

(11:25):
discouraged from going all inon music school.
But, yeah, I had two amazingparents and we bounced around
quite a bit when I was a kidmilitary background and all that
so lived in a bunch ofdifferent cities, countries,
actually I lived in Italy forsome time when I was really
young and I think that thatconstant movement has sort of
stayed with me today.

(11:45):
As you looked at.
I mean, one interpretation ofthe background is like he's done
a lot of things.
Another interpretation is he'sjust all over the place.
He can't keep still, which,yeah, I think there's definitely
an element of that Not keepingstill long enough for any given
time, and I think that'sprobably due to my early
upbringing of kind of justconstant change, but I don't

(12:06):
know.
It keeps life interesting forsure.

Klara (12:08):
And you mentioned music.
That is clearly a passion and Iknow we chatted briefly in our
intro call that you still keepthat on the side, something that
is your outlet and inspiration.
What was that path?
How did you uncover music beingthe thing for you, and even the
passion you mentioned initiallywanting to be a musician,

(12:29):
perhaps?

Josh Payne (12:30):
Yeah, this is one of those things that I've learned
that I can't do without.
And how I learned this is forthe last.
The last company that I builtwe were based in LA for most of
it and I didn't have anyone toplay music with for the longest
time living in LA, because Ididn't have a community there
initially and I started gettinga little bit I don't know, I

(12:52):
wouldn't say depressednecessarily, but I could feel
that part of myself reallyshriveling up and that was
impacting my mood, creativityand all that stuff.
So I actually started flying upto the Bay Area every weekend
to just play music with my jazzquartet on the weekends.
And yeah, I guess it was thatpoint.
It was probably about eightmonths, nine months into living

(13:12):
in LA where I kind of cracked alittle bit and I was like I have
to keep playing somehow andsince that moment I just
realized this has got to be partof my life in some fashion.
Obviously, there's a limit towhat you can do with limited
hours in the day, so I don'tplay in a ton of groups.
So, like, the SF Philharmonicis not the professional level SF

(13:34):
symphony, to be really clear,but it is a good group and so we
are able to get together, havea couple of rehearsals before
each concert once a quarter, andyeah, it's like a lightweight
way to keep that part of mealive and, you know, do a little
jazz trio on the weekends aswell.
So it's just really importantfor creativity.
I think music is one of thosethings that completely rewires

(13:54):
your brain, puts you in adifferent state.
When you're actively makingmusic it can be almost
meditative in terms of whereyour mind goes and how you feel
coming out of it.
I'm sure that there are otherthings that bring that.
I'm sure, like for elite levelathletes, you can find that same
level of flow state in thesport that one is doing I've

(14:17):
heard, which is really cool, sodefinitely a huge recommendation
on that, just to find that flowstate.

Klara (14:23):
Yeah, it is interesting, as what you mentioned, I do
definitely get it in my favoritesports and music is one of the
interesting things.
When you find a song thatreally hits with you, it just
can get you moving.
I always listen to music on myplaylist before my tennis
matches and you kind of gothrough the same routine that
you know tries to get you to thesame mindset.

(14:44):
So you're consistent.
It's interesting.
It's something that's been withus for the history of society.
Civilizations, right, peoplealways found a way to enhance
the culture or our lives withmusic and that has evolved.
But you really sense it.
You mentioned composing.
I can't envision.

(15:04):
Actually I love music,obviously, listen to music.
I used to play piano.
I would be very crappy pianistnow.
I quit that right when Istarted playing tennis seriously
.
But I can't imagine the mindsetor, I guess, relaxation or
what's the state of mind whenyou actually get to create
something completely new.
How do you come up with thatidea?

Josh Payne (15:26):
well, it kind of it has to be emergent to an extent
and it's a little bit reactive,like when you're, when you're
playing tennis you mentioned youhave some of a flow state.
Have you found that your bodyis able to kind of react on its
own?

Klara (15:39):
based on what the opponent does yeah like you
actually just have to give itaway, and if you get out of your
own way, it knows exactly whatyou do.
Actually, that's mostly the wayto play.
Well, you have to disconnectthe mind and let just your body
execute yeah, that that.

Josh Payne (15:57):
That resonates a lot with me.
I think that's the exact sameconcept.
I mean, the more you try toforce it, the worse it's going
to be, counterintuitively.
But you do have to, like I mean, imagine, in tennis too, you
just have to.
You can't get to, you know,level 10 off the bat immediately
, like you have to put the hoursin.
It has to start to becomesecond nature and then you can

(16:18):
enjoy those benefits, right?
Is that the case in tennis too?

Klara (16:22):
The muscle memory is fantastic thing, and the only
way to do it is you just put ina lot of hours.
So I always yeah, I thinkthere's a lot of similarities
actually between all being anathlete, being a great musician,
because no great musician justwas born by sitting by a
whatever piano or whatever theirinstrument is, for 10 minutes a

(16:42):
day.
Whatever you do, you have toput hours and hours of practice
into it and then you get better.
And now, as I say, it isprobably the same with
entrepreneurship.
So it really seems to me now,as you mentioned the music, that
you're applying a similarmethod for creating companies

(17:03):
into your entrepreneurship.
Is that accurate?
You just try to get out of yourown way and see the trends.
Or, if you look at yourstartups that you were part of
and co-founded and even co-frame, what's the mindset for
creating those ventures?

Josh Payne (17:22):
Yeah, certainly, elements of that are about
getting out of your own way.
It's definitely more of acomplex process than the act of
maybe writing something orplaying a sport in the moment,
because it requires a bunch ofdifferent.
It's a life, right, it's a wayof life, I would say.
But there are certain aspectsof that or certain times within

(17:43):
that where you do need to feellike you're in a flow state, for
instance, sales calls orrecruiting calls.
You just have to really letyourself connect with the other
person, other people, try to letyourself feel that flow and try
to communicate that flow to theother person as well, and and

(18:05):
and that that's a really, reallykey part of um, a part of, I
think, any type of repetitivething that you're doing.
That's really important for youto nail at a company is is
getting into that flow state andletting your body learn right.
There are also elements of itthat are just genuinely.
You got to grit your teeth andit's hard.
It's not flow state.
It's like I have to thinkreally hard to figure out this

(18:26):
challenging problem I found,personally speaking and I'm sure
that this is useful in sportsas well there's a therapy that I
discovered recently, calledflotation tanks, like sensory
deprivation chamber, some peoplecall it, and just getting in
there for an hour or two hoursand letting your mind wander, or
maybe even having an agenda forwhat to problem solve around.

(18:50):
But you're able to get intothis like subconscious, almost
lucid dreaming, like state whereyour mind is less blocked and
you're able to figure out whatare the actual important things
I need to be figuring out rightnow.
Yeah so, so certainly levels toit.
There's a ton of differentaspects of of building building
a company, and sometimes,sometimes, it's legitimately

(19:10):
just a grind, like when you'rein there doing cold outbound to
people, or like someone someonetells you like they're going to
quit, or like some customersangry.
You just got to grit your teethand get through it, but that's
life.

Klara (19:24):
Yes, there's always a balance of the things that are
pleasant or joyful and thethings that you have to do, and
I think, as far as the good andpositive still overpowers the
things that you just feel likeyou have to do and grind through
, I think that's still a goodbalance if it's more than 50%.

Josh Payne (19:44):
That's the aspiration at least.

Klara (19:46):
Yeah, that is true.
I'm sure in the startupbuilding phases that can be even
more than that, which I'mcurious to dive into.
So, outside of the things Ihave mentioned, you are also
founder of the Stanford COVID-19Response Lab.
You are a founding team ofMarlin Protocols and also
started then the Access Bell andAutograph.

(20:08):
Which order was that in?
And actually, how do we want tostart?
How did you get the courage tojump in?
It seemed like right away to.
I want to create something ofmy own.

Josh Payne (20:17):
I guess I started getting a little bit of an
inkling of entrepreneurial pushin high school.
I would say that that's thefirst time I really started to
feel that a little bit, and itwas not through anything
technical, in fact, it wasdefinitely very much not
technical.
Prior to going to college I wasmore to music.
I was working as a waiter atthe time at a local restaurant

(20:39):
and saved up some money to buysome recording gear for my at
the time jazz quintet and had agreat time.
We made some music and so on,and then I had the notion to
create an actual album.
So we did that.
We sold the album, did a littlebit of local touring in the

(21:01):
local cities and stuff Nothingsuper serious.
But the sales from that I wasable to see like we're like oh
wait, I can reinvest this backinto business.
Obviously it wasn't thinkingvery sophisticated back then,
but I took the proceeds and wasable to buy better equipment.
And then we made another albumand I was like wait, this is a
loop, this is basically abusiness in a way, in a small

(21:22):
way, very small way, and thatwas really interesting to me is
that you could create theseloops and it could be something
that you really genuinely enjoydoing as you were doing it.
So going into college I gotexposed to computer science and
you know the general notion ofbuilding things and startups
super out of my depth, like verymuch did not have a good time.
The first quarter or two incollege was like way outgunned

(21:47):
by all my peers who were justlike doing amazing things and I
was like what do I do with mylife?
I don't know what I'm here for.
So I definitely did some soulsearching but I guess that like
that seed was already plantedand I started exploring
entrepreneurship, which was kindof like the term that I had
sort of started to discover inhigh school, and the first

(22:10):
exposure to that was through aclass taught by this amazing
professor, chuck Easley, atStanford in technology
entrepreneurship.
So that kind of like showed methe ropes of what that was.
One of my current jazz triomembers I actually met.
He was one of the guestlecturers in that class.
So that's a fun fact,definitely mixing that, the

(22:31):
music and entrepreneurship.
So got the bug there, builtsomething.
It didn't work out, decided Iwanted to like join into
something.
That's where Marlin came intothe picture.
I was really interested incrypto at the time as a general
concept and went through adifferent class in which some
classmates and I built somethingwhich ended up becoming Marlin

(22:52):
Protocol.
That company ended up becomingpretty successful.
I unfortunately left prettyearly, I guess within six or
nine months, to go work at IBMResearch for an internship, but
it continued and it becamereally.
You know, at one point it wasquite, quite, quite big.
So that was kind of an initial,like a cool initial early
experience there from from there, went through college, I guess,

(23:15):
worked on a couple of thingshere and there and then when
COVID hit, that was when I guessI was like really called to
action.
I would say so.
It was COVID had just hit.
I was going in between mysenior year and then my going
into business school at the GSBand there were a bunch of
classmates and I were just likesitting there like what do we do
with this crisis and what I?

(23:38):
What I figured might be bothlike a way to leave a big impact
but also have a lot of fun wasbasically bringing together this
group to solve these problemsrelated to COVID, and that's
what ultimately became thisincubator called the COVID
Response Innovation Lab.
I grew it to a couple hundredpeople and there's actually a
lot of really cool companiesthat came out of it.
One of the companies wasAccessBell, which I kind of like

(24:01):
had met with a couple ofclassmates GSB classmates
basically like went through thistogether as I was kind of
helping to organize it, Isuppose, and that ended up
becoming an actual company.
And we worked with Tata Group.
As you mentioned, bigconglomerate in India ended up

(24:22):
selling the company to themafter about a year and it's
still used internally at TopTagGroup today.
Actually the software powersthe internal telemedicine, which
is kind of neat, and so as wewere navigating that sale, we
weren't able to really scale toother big companies, which is
what we wanted to do.
Or I would say we might've beenable to if we had more

(24:45):
experience and we just didn't.
So that was kind of a sign thatwe needed to, because it wasn't
scaling, it was kind of alittle bit more consultative.
It was less of a high growth,high scale tech company and more
of just like let's figure outand solve for your problems,
cause they have a lot of needs.
So we ended up selling to them.
They have a lot of needs, so weended up selling to them and as

(25:08):
I was exploring, you know whatto do next.
That's where the idea forautograph came along.
I met my co founder for that,dylan, through the same actually
the same incubator, the COVIDresponse lab, and we had stayed
in touch throughout, andinitially we were actually
working on a hedge fund idea.
We wanted to like basicallycreate strategies for trading
money and initially looking atnormal equities, and then we

(25:32):
looked at crypto and then Dylangot really, really interested in
the at the time was reallystarting to boom was NFTs and
that, sure enough, like we kepttracking it and it kept you know
, taking off and we were like,wait, we should, instead of like
trying to make you know,instead of trying to make a fund
which none of us have the dnafor, we should just try to make

(25:54):
a company.
And that's that's basically howthat kind of got got off the
ground.
Dylan and his father, richrosenbl His dad is super
connected in LA, very seasonedentrepreneur himself, and he's
built a lot of really coolcompanies.
And the TLDR is they lived nextdoor to Tom Tom Brady for like

(26:15):
eight years, or they had livednext door to him for like eight
years, and so they're stillrelatively close, and so, yeah,
we were able to get in touch,kind of tell them about the
concept.
We had built a little bit ofmomentum we're getting some cool
partnerships going Told himabout the concept and, sure
enough, he wanted to join on,not just as like a supporter or
investor, but also as aco-founder, and so that's how

(26:36):
that got off the ground.
That's the whole arc.
I went too long, but that's it.

Klara (26:40):
No, you actually didn't.
I have a whole bunch ofquestions as a follow-up.
How do you know that this areaor that specific idea that you
have is the one to follow andthat you want to build into a
startup, because it seems like,kind of the way you describe it,
I'm sure there's a whole bunchof interesting things coming
your way, even at Stanford, thatseem to be highly creative and

(27:01):
entrepreneurship type of crowd,and so how do you validate, all
right, this team I want to bepart of, or this one not, and
this idea has enough legs for meto explore it further and then
build it to something biggerwhen there are specific trends,
as you kind of look at the past,that you want to take, even as

(27:22):
learnings.
This is what works for me andthis is maybe things that I
should be aware of for any newventures that if I see this or
the other flag that it might benot worth it pursuing.

Josh Payne (27:38):
Yeah, that's a fantastic question.
That's a million dollarquestion really.
This is changing for me.
It's a million dollar questionreally.
This is changing for me.
But so far it's been very, veryinstinctual and not very
strategic is more, it's beenmore like kind of follow the
plot, like plot driven ornarrative driven.
Certainly I do want to likefollow your passion part to stay

(28:00):
like I wouldn't want to findmyself building something I
wasn't truly passionate about.
But I actually think thatbecoming as strategic as
possible as early as possible isis is a good move.
What that does is it allows youto like plot for a longer
course, right, um, somethingthat's been interesting.

(28:22):
I guess I give myself somecritique here, like I've for the
most part.
I mean it's been, I don't know,like six years out of school or
so at this point Um, in termsof looking at like compound
value in building like one thingand making that really really
big and important.
There's that.
That's one strategy.

(28:42):
Another strategy is to, likeyou know, take a shot at a
couple of things because it'slike shiny and interesting,
which I think was good for likelearning and getting a sense of
the space, and like having abunch of different experience
and basically like laying outthe map essentially, but I don't
know if it was as good for justlike going super deep, which is
something I have growth in, Ihave room to grow in for sure.

(29:07):
It's just like the disciplineof being super strategic and
going really, really deep andstaying committed.
I was never uncommitted, butjust like having that depth, if
that makes sense.
So, yeah, if I were to maybelike give my past self some
advice, it would probably bekeep the passion, keep the

(29:28):
instincts for the right people,which is really, really
important, cause that I thinkI've always done a good job with
.
But think a little bit likealways done a good job with, but
think a little bit like it'snot just about having fun, like,
yes, have fun, but thatshouldn't be the entire plot.
If that makes sense, thereshould be some deep thinking,
especially with things that areso important as like what

(29:49):
company do you build?
That's one piece of critiqueand I'm working on it.
You know these, these floattank sessions, are really
helping me out here.
I will say I discovered it likehalf a year ago and it's been
absolutely incredible.
I've, like I've probably bought, like at this point, like five
people float tank or moreprobably, float tank sessions,
just so that they can try it,cause I'm like this is the way,

(30:09):
like you gotta try it, you'llfigure out all your problems.

Klara (30:13):
I love that.
How often do you do them?

Josh Payne (30:15):
Not often enough, like probably once every two
months, I'm overdue.
Well, I did one about threeweeks ago, right before my trip
to Cannes, so that I could sortof path plan and strategize what
I was going to get out of it,and that was actually like
incredibly helpful, yeah.
But out of that session I knewI needed to do another one

(30:38):
quickly because I was likethere's still a lot more to dig
into here that I didn't havetime to dig into.
So I got to do a part two.

Klara (30:44):
Love that.
I want to dive a little deeperinto the second one.
You mentioned instinct for theright people Because, again,
building startups and from myown experience I've kind of had
a few things on the side in thepast that I've been trying to
build and I think the foundingteam is so important If you
don't have the right people.

(31:04):
In fact, I would guess that thevast majority why startups fail
is because of the founding team.
They even can't figure out howto have complementary skill set
or can't figure out to get toknow each other enough or just
grind through the beginningsthat are super challenging.
There needs to be commitmentfrom all people who are involved

(31:27):
.
How do you choose your foundingteams?
It seems like you've had someconnections that you knew from
one that you were working outwell with another partner and
kind of started another onelater.
But what do you look for?
What are some of the keys tosuccess for picking the right
founding team?

Josh Payne (31:46):
That's a difficult one to put into words because,
as I mentioned, instinct isreally really important here.
Honestly, one of the mostimportant things you can do with
figuring out any part of yourteam ideally, but, but
especially the founding team isis, like, how do I work with
this person before I work withthem, if that makes sense, like
in this, in this initiative?

(32:07):
Startups are quite a ride andthey can sometimes really strain
your relationship, and so Iactually usually don't.
I think this is common adviceto like not start something with
someone who you're like goodfriends with, because you don't
want to have the business strainleak into your friendship and
maybe potentially like kind ofruin it.
There certainly have been timesin the past where, like, just

(32:30):
the business strain has beenreally immense and, on the other
hand, like having someone whoyou have a really incredible
working relationship with issuper valuable and establishing
that prior to starting somethingwith them is such a smart thing
to do.
So I would say maybe likeseparate that notion of

(32:50):
friendship and work ship I don'tknow what the word for it would
be, but work, relationship andtrying to get a sense for them
beforehand.
I definitely did that with witheveryone that I've basically
started something with the covidresponsivation lab.
Like that was a great way forme to observe and work with
people.
I started access belt with, andthen actually the same thing

(33:13):
for autograph and you know Iexplored that too for co-frame,
ended up starting off as a solofounder for a co-frame, um, but
I certainly like had a couple ofconversations and a little bit
of collaborating here and therewith people.
Well, I guess I had a couple ofexperiences in the middle there
like, um, starting at like asmall fund, so I got to work
with a couple of folks before wewent all in and doing, uh, a

(33:37):
fund together.
That was super valuable andyeah, that's something that I
can certainly vouch for is justlike getting to know someone, I
guess.
If maybe like othercharacteristics value, alignment
, and what are you here to do?
You know, here in this world todo Maybe that's a profound
question, maybe too deep for thefirst conversation you have
with someone, but getting, butgetting that sense like cause.

(34:00):
Some people, some people don'thave too much um, uh of a
direction either way, and somepeople are like very driven by a
trip on their shoulder.
Some people are genuinely justpulled, pulled forward by what
feels like the universe, um, oryou know whatever it is like.
Try to find out what drivesthem and align.

(34:23):
You know you got to have theequal yoking right, be aligned
and be driven by ideally likethe same force, because that's
going to be so important whenthe time is really tough, like
why are we here?
Like what are we in here in thetrenches doing If it's not for
a deeper reason?
There's going to be lessdurability in that, like desire
to push forward, which ishonestly something that every

(34:46):
successful company you knowfaces at one point, is adversity
, like extreme adversity, andcontinuing to push forward is
really, really key there, andfinding people who are going to
do that with you is reallyimportant.
Continue to push forward isreally key there.

Klara (34:58):
And finding people who are going to do that with you is
really important.
That reminded me I listened toone of your podcasts where you
actually shared a while back youhad a bike accident and really
got out of that accident with alot of luck, which made you
reevaluate a little bit of thesedeep questions I also shared.
I recently went through alittle bit of my health care too

(35:20):
.
Three, four months ago.
That was really kind of thefirst time facing with potential
news of like really some deepthinking.
I've always thought I wasthoughtful about my career, but
just that experience three, fourmonths back made me realize how
not thoughtful enough I was andthere's probably even deeper
level of thoughts that I haven'teven gotten to.

(35:41):
How do you reconcile that,because I find it's really rare
that people have the level ofawareness and asking those deep
questions.
Do you contribute that to theaccident?
Has that triggered kind of thedeeper chain reaction to really
understand that time is limitedand you need to maximize it as

(36:04):
much as possible to create thevalue and achieve what you want,
or either other things, evenfrom your upbringing or the
journey that made you realizethe importance of it?

Josh Payne (36:15):
As you've probably experienced, those moments can
just like open a door that can'tbe closed, if that makes sense.
Like you know, you seesomething you can't unsee.
Uh, yeah, certainly.
I mean, the accident was amajor catalyst for thinking,
thinking about all that stuff ina pretty deep level.

(36:36):
There probably is a fairly afairly large like contrast in
like life, in thinking beforeversus after, from that
particular moment, um, and inother moments surrounding it,
like, uh, of, maybe there's thefeeling of like you know what's
Like there.

(36:57):
There certainly were moments ofdespair, I would say,
especially throughout college,even like throughout throughout
my whole life, but I meancertainly some, some, some
difficult ones throughout thatexperience, just like you know,
not necessarily triggered by anyspecific like event, but just a
general uh, despair, um, and so, yeah, those things will make

(37:21):
you think, for sure, and it'll,it'll, it'll cause you to to
like, question, uh, questionthings that aren't usually
questioned and and allow for newthinking and allow for new um
realizations about yourself anddirection, and that'll create
new direction and you will usethat direction to like find the
next thing and it ends upturning into into, into

(37:45):
something and I suppose, likethe, the hope is that that
something is, is, is good, andit puts you on path.
Usually going through difficultthings does um, does, does turn
into into good outcomes.
Like um, jensen Huang had hadthis like amazing talk at
Stanford.
Um, I wasn't there for it, butI saw a recording.

(38:06):
One of the lines that he thathe said to the the audience was
um, I wish you ample doses ofsuffering, because because
that's what makes people trulystrong and and resilient and and
great.
Honestly, it's like well,that's how greatness is formed
is through suffering.

(38:27):
It's kind of I don't know ifit's an unfortunate fact of life
, it's kind of beautiful.
It's certainly beautiful,that's for sure.
Um, it feels like it might beunfortunate but in a way, it's
like, yeah, it feels right thatthat's the case.

Klara (38:39):
Yeah, I resonate with it for sure.
I think that's one thing Iremind myself to work at every
day.
Muscles are formed throughstrain, and I think it's the
same true for mind.
If you want to be smarter, youjust got to use your mind in the
same way, or in many ways, asthe cold plunges is what we do.
We're putting yourself indiscomfort for four, five, 10

(39:01):
minutes in the cold water, andthen you come out and you feel
amazing about yourself.
It doesn't last that long, butit's still something that I'm
addicted to, that I do every day.
How do you actually maintain,josh, that groundedness?
I know you mentioned theflotation tanks, music.
How do you keep that steadinessand awareness and keep track of

(39:21):
the purpose and what you'rebuilding?
Are there any other tips?

Josh Payne (39:25):
No man, I mean that question is making a lot of
assumptions that I do keep asteadiness.
I mean, to an extent I do.
I'd say it's not I'm likecompletely lost all the time.
But there's certainly momentswhere it's like you do feel
ungrounded and disconnected andmaybe just like like whoa, and

(39:46):
then you then you take a stepback or like you have some
moment where you you're thinkingconsciously about it again.
It's like whoa, like that wholelast week, like I was kind of
just like out of the zone, likewhat happened.
So flow tanks are a great way toget back into that grounded
state.
Cold plunges are great.
I love cold plunges.
I don't have the samediscipline that you do to do
them every day, but they'rereally great.

(40:08):
Yeah, music like getting into aflow state.
I think what that does is itrefreshes your mind.
So it puts you into a, into amental state where you're able
to you have, you have like a,not a second wind, but like more
, more mental durability andenergy, and that can lead to you

(40:30):
feeling like you have the spaceto think about hard things
again, cause sometimes sometimesI mean the fact of it is life
is so busy that you feel likeyou don't really have the luxury
of taking a step back andhaving that 30,000 foot view and
thinking about things.
Even if you did, it wouldactually be highly beneficial.

(40:53):
And you look at the before andafter and it'd be like night and
day.
You still, in that momentespecially, you're oh, but like
in this one moment right now Istill got to grind or I don't
have the energy or motivation.
I just want to keep scrollingon Instagram or whatever it is.
That's just like reallychallenging.
I feel like there's like a some,some idea of a muscle that that

(41:13):
must be worked up.
That sort of like pulls you outof that state.
When I find a way to like trainthat consciously and directly,
I'll let you know.
But like that's a reallyinteresting and important one.
But I guess, like having habits, like people fall back into
their habits, that's kind of onething.
So for me it's music habit, forothers it could be doing that

(41:33):
daily ritual of a cold plunge.
You probably have an immenseamount of energy coming right
out of that and a lot of likeexuberance and joy and so on.
If you had a schedule forflotation tanks to have that
like high level thinking, thatcould be really beneficial.
I haven't given myself aschedule for that yet.
I probably should.
I just kind of like generallydo it when enough like mental

(41:55):
cruft builds up.
I got to think about all this.

Klara (41:57):
I just kind of like generally do it when enough like
mental cruft builds up.
I got to think about all this.
Yeah, I feel like creating aroutine can be helpful, but at
times it's really hard.
I think especially hard whenyou feel like you're driving
progress and you're solvingsomething and you have one thing
after another, and even themore exciting it is, the harder
it is to step away.
So actually continue to carveout the time every two, three,

(42:19):
four weeks, whatever cadencethat is for you.
I feel like it's even morechallenging then because you so
don't want to step away fromwhat's going on.
But you also know that thestepping away will create much
more space and clarity ofthought or ideas, which, yeah, I
always struggle with it.
It's hard to step away, butthen once I'm due, I'm so

(42:42):
grateful that I have done it.
So I want to go a little bitdeeper into a couple of the
startups still even Access Bellwhich again remind me.
It seemed like it was digitalhealth platform that came out a
little bit out of the StanfordCOVID-19 response that was
acquired by Tata, because theyseemed like they wanted to
actually stretch into thehealthcare market and build

(43:03):
something of their own.
So it seemed like it was aperfect fit.
Again, being acquired is nosmall task.
How did you achieve that?
How did you find that match?

Josh Payne (43:13):
Well, the initial match was made.
Once you're working with thecompany, I guess the discussion
to sell something to them isn't.
It's not an easy one, but it'snot completely out of the blue.
It happens a lot.
You'll sell it to one of yourcustomers.
So I guess the more interestingpiece here was how the initial
relationship got started.

(43:34):
Certainly a good degree of, Iguess, fortune involved there
too.
I had this classmate when I wasin undergrad.
Relationship got started.
Certainly a good degree of, Iguess, fortune involved there
too.
I had this classmate when I wasin undergrad.
I took a couple of classes atthe business school just because
I wanted to learn aboutbusiness, and one of the
students that I met there shewas an MSX student At the time.
She was a general manager forTata, so she helped with a bunch

(43:58):
of initiatives across the wholeportfolio.
She was part of Tata, so shehelped to.
She helped with a bunch ofinitiatives across the whole
portfolio.
She was part of Tata Sons,which is like kind of the parent
company, I would say, and welike kept in touch over the
course of I don't know threeyears or four years from when I
met her to, and then she wentback to India, I think.
And when we were catching up atthat point we had this software
that we built and we built avideo conferencing platform for

(44:20):
calls.
We could easily spin up and Iwas doing all the time catching
up with people with it was like,yeah, let's use our platform,
that's kind of cool.
And so catching up on thisplatform and she, she just says,
hey, like you know, we'reexploring a new video
conferencing platform.
I noticed that this worked onmobile for web, which is kind of
cool.
We're exploring new platformoptions for telemedicine, for

(44:45):
Tata Medical and Diagnostics,which is that part of Tata that
was kind of getting spun up Ithink at the time, and a really
important requirement for theirtelemedicine platform was that
it could work on mobile web.
The reason for that being isthat most people have mobile
devices and, you know,downloading an app it takes a

(45:07):
lot of bandwidth.
You know people don't want todownload an app for just like a
telemedicine call with theirdoctor, right.
So, like, if it works in mobileweb, it's like great's.
It's relatively just kind oflike transient.
You know it happens.
Then you're done.
And we were, I guess, beingevaluated against cisco, webex
and zoom, neither of which hadmobile web offerings.
I think at the time google meetalso did not have a mobile web

(45:30):
offering.
It was, it was only through theapp if you're on your phone,
and so we like went through theprocess and and we were the
solution that they went forwardwith and got to kind of like
build for the requirements andended up becoming, like I
mentioned, pretty consultativebecause they're a huge, huge
enterprise.
Lots and lots of needs.
We had to be like deployed inMumbai servers like in India,

(45:55):
and had to go through, like youknow, be HIPAA compliant
especially, and a bunch of othercompliance hurdles.
But that was a really coolexperience for just like I was
sort of right out of undergradand so was.
So was our CTO, kamil, and thenit was like collectively it was
kind of like our first realstartup.
I would say so really cool likeearly experience working with a

(46:15):
big company like that.
Very, very lucky, I would sayso really cool like early
experience working with a bigcompany like that.

Klara (46:18):
Very, very lucky, I would say.
So how did that acquisitionfeel Like after?
Did it give you more confidencethat this is cool, I want to
continue doing this?
Did you feel successful?
Or did you think, oh, I wish wedid something else?

Josh Payne (46:31):
I think there was.
There was definitely like asome.
I mean, you always look backand you're like man, if only I
had done this.
Uh, right, yeah, I felt good,it's always smarter.
Yeah, that's right.
Um, it definitely felt good forsure, like kind of to kind of
have that under our belts.
And what also felt good, to behonest, was like, um, that we

(46:53):
didn't have to continue doingthis consultative thing and it
was hard to scale.
We were like we were allwanting to build stuff that was
really going to scale and it wasfeeling like this wasn't as
easy to scale, and so I supposeit was a little bit of uh, just
like feels right, you know, itfeels right to to kind of like
support this and then deploy itwith them.

(47:14):
They own it, and we had acouple of smaller customers, I,
I think, at the time, but it waslike they were like our only
really big customers.
But I don't know, I think thatyou look back and you're like,
if I had more experience, if Ihad the notion that we should
have gone and done a bunch oflike outbound sales or I didn't
even know what that term was atthe time Right, like, and so,
being an enterprise company, youkind of like.

(47:35):
That's like bread and butter.
So we just none of, none of usreally really knew how to do the
thing.
And so you look back and you'relike, okay, well, if, if, if
I'd done this, this and that youknow would have, would have,
could have, should have, becauseit certainly didn't.
It wasn't like a huge exittelemedicine, but yeah, it was

(47:57):
like it was nothing, nothingsubstantial, but it also like
allowed me to then go and buildAutograph, which is cool, and
then now Coframe, which is alsocool.

Klara (48:09):
Yeah, I'm curious how did even the Autograph idea started
?
Because you had a backgroundinto something completely
different you mentioned before.
You did crypto, then digitalhealth.
You have this really broadexpertise that I'm really
curious about, even into yourIBM and the other podcasts I
listened to.
You did IP and networking, eventelecom that a lot of people
just don't even want to scratchthe surface of Software

(48:33):
development, ai.
You have this really impressivebreadth.
So, going from digital healthand, I guess, telehealth
platform to Autograph that isworking with athletes, that's a
very different idea and startup.
How did you uncover that pathand what's the next step for
that?

Josh Payne (48:52):
Let's see it wasn't extremely different from what
I'd been doing, for instance,with Marlin, because they're
both crypto.
Crypto has always been ofinterest to me.
It still is.
That initial experiencecertainly helped, I think, my
framing of the opportunity toborrow pardon the pun, but I
certainly didn't have anyexperience working with athletes

(49:22):
or celebrities or anything ofthat nature and luckily I wasn't
the one who had to manage thatas someone who was kind of like
leading on the products andtechnical side.
That was more of Dylan andRich's job.
That's to be like completelyhonest.
That's like why the businessworked Like they were like
absolute killers at that side ofit.

(49:42):
But it was like a fantasticlearning experience.
It was consumer.
I hadn't at the time done aconsumer product.
I guess like Marlin was alittle bit consumery, but not
really.
It was more kind of like deeptech and so that was new.
What I like to do in general iskind of try to understand the
full environment of somethingbefore figuring out how to

(50:04):
navigate it, if that makes sense.
That is a pattern that I've seenin myself, both within a
company and also when I lookacross my journey so far and
getting coverage in differentroles, different
responsibilities, differenttypes of markets and one could
argue maybe like there's notenough time in the world to
really understand everything andyou got to go deep, and I

(50:25):
partially agree with that.
I think it's important to atsome point like go deep.
But that has really like, I find, that you take learnings from
certain areas and you're able toapply them to new areas.
For instance, with Autograph Ilearned a lot of incredible
things about marketing anddriving interest and driving

(50:46):
brand and sort of like taste, Iwould say, and that helped
significantly with Cofring.
We had like an incrediblegrowth marketing team at
Autograph.
We had like an incrediblegrowth marketing team at

(51:08):
Autograph.
And likewise there were thingsthat I picked up with Access
Bell and thinking about likebigger deals and that kind of
stuff that I was able to use andthink with Autograph,
incredible point of view on howyou can, how you use different
disciplines, uh, in in a latticework of mental models, as
you're starting, as you'resolving problems, and I firmly
believe in that.
I think it's actually reallybeneficial to have experiences
in various places that you canapply to new problems, because

(51:30):
then you can generalize and youare able to solve things that
people who are just a little bitstuck in a certain track aren't
able to solve.

Klara (51:37):
Yeah, and so the Autograph idea actually curious.
How was it to work with TomBrady?
I always look at him as justamazing figure that whichever
team he's on, he's able to levelup obviously just himself, but
everybody around him to win, andso I wonder if you had a chance
to interact with him on thatnote.

(51:59):
Any observations?

Josh Payne (52:00):
Yeah, a little bit.
We interacted especially moreat the beginning.
He did give a couple of reallygreat pep talks to the overall
company, which were alwaysinspiring.
Of course, he's just reallygood at getting people fired up.
You know he wasn't like in theslack or like he wasn't.
You know you couldn't be likeat Tom Brady, get this done or
whatever Not that type ofrelationship but when he was

(52:23):
there it was always reallyinspiring.
I remember the first time atleast the first time I
interacted with him.
We were just telling him aboutthe general idea and he was at a
practice, I think, or after apractice, sitting in the back of
like an SUV, and I justremember being like wow, the

(52:47):
most important meetings in one'scareer can be just as casual as
this.
It's kind of crazy, and thathas been true.
I've had several such meetingswith other really interesting
people in similar environments,just like off the cuff, and it
ends up being one of the mostimportant things that you do.
In those moments you didn'thave the suit on, you didn't
have like the 60 page deck ready, you just like were in the
moment and you made it happen,and it's like those types of

(53:10):
moments make it all fun I lovethat, and tell me a little bit
more about the autograph,because I know it's still around
now.

Klara (53:15):
You're still advisor and it has evolved quite a bit from
when you initially started itwith just the crypto to a little
bit different platform, so I'mcurious about it.
Obviously it has an athleticfocus well.

Josh Payne (53:28):
So now what we've, what we've identified, you know,
of course, as you're probablyaware, the the market for what
we were doing has diminished abit across the entire market,
and so we decided it would bethe best use of the team's
talent and resources to focus onan adjacent market a couple of
years ago, and that market rightnow is fitness.

(53:50):
So we merged with this companycalled Future.
We had a bunch of amazingathletes as part of the platform
, bunch of amazing athletes aspart of the platform we work
with not just Tom, but DerekJeter, tyra Gray-Woods, naomi
Osaka, usain Bolt, simone Biles,people like that and with all

(54:12):
that amazing star power, why notapply it to something that is
both very relevant and also hasa great mission, which is
fitness and wellness?
So we kind of acquired thiscompany called Future, which had
been growing.
The whole thesis was let'ssupercharge it with this star
power and accelerate the growth,basically, and so that's what
Autograph is currently focusedon now is really going all in on
using this amazing talent tohelp create these digital

(54:36):
experiences for people toimprove their fitness.

Klara (54:38):
Got it, and so how do you still keep an eye and stay well
with that while buildingCo-Frame?
So I want to transition now tothe Co-Frame idea and what
you're doing and things thatyou're scaling for some of the
largest companies in the world.

Josh Payne (54:53):
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Yeah, From a day-to-day basisI'm definitely not very involved
.
They got a good thing going,the team's got it handled and I
wouldn't be that much helpanyway, and so the TLDR is right
now.
I'm very, very focused onco-framing.
It's like very important for usto to nail this, because we
have a huge, huge opportunity onour hands if we execute really

(55:14):
well, which is what we'resingularly focused on.
I guess the last I don't knowyear and a half or so of my life
has been just completelyfocusing in on this area.
That's why I kind of, at thebeginning, was talking about how
this was a growth edge for me,which was focusing more and
being more strategic.
Well, this is me being morestrategic.
Now I've like done a lot ofthinking about the arc of this

(55:39):
opportunity and this business,and that's what I'm pretty
solely focused on at the moment.

Klara (55:44):
Tell our listeners a little bit more of what
Callframe is.
I've done some research.
I've listened to some of yourillustrative videos.
Ai is generating sort ofpersonal website experiences for
a person that is based onalgorithms that you have behind
AI Gen, ai and to kind of takeinto consideration.

(56:05):
How do I, for example, clara,who's Czech and lives in Texas,
now like to perceive the brandand what resonates to me versus,
perhaps, my mom, if it's aglobal company in Czech Republic
, versus somebody else who has,let's say, different preferences
?
Is my understanding accurate?
What do you want to add andwhat is maybe the hypothesis for

(56:27):
even starting this?

Josh Payne (56:28):
Yeah, 100%.
You're pretty spot on the waythat we see the internet going
with this advent of verypowerful AI is it's going to
become much more personalizedand adaptive.
There's two sides of this.
There's the, what we as peopleexperience on the internet, and
then there's the business side,what businesses want out of

(56:53):
these experiences, these digitalexperiences.
On our side, for the most part,the internet is fairly static.
It's not very contextual, it'snot very personalized.
It's a little bit hard toconceptualize this when you
don't have a clear picture ofwhat it could be.
You know, like before peoplehad the iPhone, they didn't know
that they wanted the iPhonekind of situation.

(57:14):
But I think the closest proxythat we could make to this and
we can argue certainly on theimpact on society of these
platforms but social media andsearch too, I would say highly
contextual, highly adaptive andextremely effective at keeping

(57:35):
people engaged.
Now is that a good thing forsociety?
Like we could certainly argueabout that.
But I think you know, by andlarge, making make the internet
more contextual, we would.
We would see in some cases itwould.
It would also maybe have thislike negative effect on.
You know, people would bewasting their time and so on and
so forth.
But, like, what I get excitedabout are the cases where it

(57:56):
makes people more productive,more effective, more informed,
right, like you're coming into anew website or experience and
it's able to communicate to youwhy it makes sense for you to be
there or or not.
Like you know, you have theclearest picture possible of
like what this is that I'minteracting with, and suddenly

(58:17):
that like you're not just on theinternet, like kind of more or
less blindly trying to figureout what what's relevant to you.
It's like kind of along withthe journey with you, it's like
a companion in a sense, and sothat's that's kind of the future
that I see these interfaces,these digital interfaces,
continuously adapting to us andpersonalizing and so on, and

(58:38):
that ultimately should makeinformation more efficient.
Like information flow moreefficient, commerce more
efficient, the whole.
Like notion of blasting ads atpeople that are just irrelevant,
like that's why people don'tlike ads.
It's because it's like notrelevant, it's like spammy, it's

(58:58):
you know it's not for them, butlike if you had a world where
everything just made sense andlike was a good fit.
Like that's what we want todrive toward for the internet.
So on the business side, ofcourse, this is where, like,
more of the strategy part comesin and like kind of framing it.
You know, people have websitesthat are an important part of
their commerce, and how do youdrive more business through the
website?

(59:19):
Well, you have to make surethat that experience connects
the most effective way possiblewith your visitors to the site,
and so the way that people dothis is because you're not an
Oracle, you don't know for sure.
You have to run theseexperiments, so you have to try
different versions of thewebsite.
People refer to the term A-Btesting.
You know is a common kind oflike well-known, well-understood

(59:41):
term for this.
You have to try differentexperiences out, but the act of
trying those experiences out isreally time consuming, really
expensive.
It requires marketers to go andunderstand the data and then
that they pass it off theirconcepts, the designer who goes
and designs variations, and ittakes a couple weeks to get
those out.
And then they pass it off tothe engineers who go and build

(01:00:01):
and implement it in code, andthat takes another few weeks.
And then they go and pass it tothe QA team and they make sure
it passes all the brandguidelines and the compliance
guidelines, and it's just like ahuge, long, messy process, and
what we're doing at Coframe issimplifying it immensely, like
we're taking what usually takessometimes months.
I was just chatting with areally, really large brand and

(01:00:23):
one of the things that wediscovered in one of our calls
recently with them was it takesthem anywhere between 600 hours
and 1,000 hours per experienceto do an A-B test, and sometimes
2,000 hours plus for reallycomplex ones.
That's just like an immenseamount of time.
It's mind-boggling.
It's like three to four monthsto get something out the door
and um and a co-framed.
We're like we help to createthese variations within minutes

(01:00:47):
and hours, like it's way, wayfaster and we can test way more
as a result.
Basically, someone has an ideaeither us or them and it's ready
within a day instead of beingmonths, you know, and so, as a
result, what we're able to do isjust have a way higher velocity
of testing and really iteratetoward that best, most optimal
experience for your customersand for the metric that you care

(01:01:09):
about.

Klara (01:01:17):
Once we think about both sides of the coin, the speed at
which you can continue going andsavings when it comes to not
running these A-B tests.
I've actually listened to oneof your videos that you're kind
of predicting A-B tests aregoing to be obsolete sooner or
later.
Because if you actually couldapply this also to anything
campaign, email marketing, evensocial media people usually run
A-B testing right and it's justthe same amount of you have to
create different versions.

(01:01:38):
You test monitor.
So if you can shorten thatacross all spans of marketing
communication, I can imaginejust that saving and efficiency
and effectiveness.
At the same time, it makes methink of especially one of the
big brands that I worked forconsistency and kind of fear of
always be exactly on point theway they want to be, and so that

(01:01:58):
could be just an obstacle thatI can foresee you maybe running
into in some ways or another.
I guess the question is isthere an ideal client, or who
are you seeing this isresonating with the most?
Maybe, on top of that, arethere any specific objections or
fears that you see you have todebunk when it comes to adopting

(01:02:20):
call frame?

Josh Payne (01:02:22):
yeah, well, so who works with the most is anyone
that has a good amount oftraffic.
So, like most consumerbusinesses, this is great, for
it tends to work really well fore-commerce, for travel,
financial, consumer financialservices.
There's a bunch of differentcategories out there, but
anything consumer-y, if you will, and not just enterprise either

(01:02:44):
.
Also, we work with a number ofmid-market companies as well.
Anything that's got enoughtraffic, or if they have a team
that's running these experiments, imagine if you could staff
that team on building yourproduct instead, instead of just
building stuff that 90% of it'sgoing to get thrown out anyway
because it's not a winning test.
So that's where we fit inreally well.

(01:03:04):
And on the objection side, Imean, yeah, of course there are
objections, like is this fitwith my brand guidelines, like
how do I make sure I getapprovals over this, like other
impacts on performance and allthat stuff.
And the cool part is like, oncewe get deep enough, we always
have the right answers.
It's just a matter of likegetting there, but it has taken
some iteration to get there forsure.

Klara (01:03:25):
So similar questions on Conframe, even how you started
it, I'm really curious if youcan dive a little bit deeper
into how you measure the data.
How do you distinguish, let'ssay, what I would like to see
and perceive on the page andwhat I'm looking for versus
somebody else?
Are there trackers on thewebsite that you have to use?
Privacy and security?

(01:03:46):
How do you measure even wheremy eyes go and what am I
interested in when I get on thepage versus somebody else?
There's like a whole concept ofeven privacy and security.
I guess that is underlining.
I'm just curious how you'resegmenting that on the broader
scale.

Yeah, that's a good question.
We're not doing anything assophisticated or scary as eye
tracking.
That would be pretty insane,although the technology does
exist.
But yeah, so we don't trackanything that's personal as far
as data goes.
We're not tracking you acrossdifferent sites.
We're not tracking anypersonalized information.
We work with a number ofcompanies that are subject to

(01:04:25):
GDPR requirements, and also formedical, there's HIPAA as well,
and so we're only measuringevents that happen on the
website on an anonymized userbasis.
So if someone comes to thewebsite, the place they come
from can also actually give ussome good signal on what is
going to resonate the best forthem.
Let's say that you're runningsome ads to your website like

(01:04:47):
some Google search ads.
If the user is clicking on thead and then they are dropped
into a one size fits all landingpage that's not personalized to
them, the conversion rate isgoing to hurt, because that user
is gonna be like this is notquite what I was expecting.
You know, I kind of looked atsomething different in the ad.
It said something else.
I'm not seeing it here.

(01:05:07):
I'm gonna leave the cool thing.
One cool thing about co-frame isthat you can sort of like do
this personalization acrossdifferent ad groups that you're
running and individual ads andstuff like that.
That tends to be a powerful wayto do personalization across
different ad groups that you'rerunning and individual ads and
stuff like that.
That tends to be a powerful wayto do personalization, where
you don't actually know anythingabout the person themselves,
but you do know where they camefrom, and that's something that,
luckily speaking, isn't ofconcern on any sort of data

(01:05:30):
privacy.
And then, yeah, the other coolpart is like to us, users are
just a series of clicks on apage.
They're not tied to anythingpersonal.
We don't know their name, wedon't know their email, anything
like that, so it's a highlyanonymized environment, which,
for companies that are subjectto GDPR and other regulations

(01:05:51):
like that, it's very importantto have that level of kind of
like anonymization.

Klara (01:05:56):
Yeah, people can see.
I've been in Accenture for awhile.
We have a whole bunch of publicresearch and the world is
continuing to head towardspersonalization.
Whether we want it or not,consumers do want personalized
experiences.
I guess the question is how topersonalize in the right way,
how to achieve it in the rightway, which seems like your

(01:06:16):
technology and the way you havebuilt Coframe allows companies
to do that, so why wouldn'tanybody use that?
Is that the aspiration, or whatare your goals that align with,
kind of your view of where theinternet is going and the
personalization?

Certainly, and that's our view as well Like
there should be no reason not touse Cofframe, it should be
silly to not use co-frame.
That's kind of our mantra ingeneral and I think today it's
still silly to not use co-frame.
The only limitation really isthat there is still some human
involvement required from ourside to make sure all the
quality is there, the layer ofquality assurance.

(01:06:51):
It's not fully automated.
Ai is only so good.
It's getting better reallyquickly.
Even in just the last two months, like our product quality has
kind of skyrocketed and we'veseen some really big wins as a
result for clients.
But there's still that humanfactor of I would call it
customer success or servicedelivery and making sure people
are getting the value that theypay for and all that stuff and

(01:07:14):
more.
And so once it's fully, fullyand ai is really really great
well, it is already really great, but once it's, you know, good
enough to be able to take onthis fully, sure, I mean this is
going to be something I thinkevery website should have like
as a no-brainer for sure yeah,where do you see this ai world
heading?

Klara (01:07:32):
because you've been at the center of, it seems like,
playing with AI from thebeginning and now implementing
it really as a core ingredientsof your venture at Cofframe.
What do you foresee happeningnext?

Yeah, I wouldn't say I was there since the beginning
.
For sure that's true.

Klara (01:07:49):
Actually I started way back, I guess the Gen AI and
kind of the new wave of.
I feel like you've been playingwith the technology, really,
since it's been picking up.

Yeah, nai, for sure, and deep learning before that,
I guess that was yeah.
Where do I see it going?
The pace at which it'simproving is remarkable and at
times, a little bit alarmingbecause of the implications of
not being the most intelligentspecies, like the, not being the

(01:08:19):
top dog eventually.
I don't think humanity isprepared for that at all, like
we've never faced any problemthat is remotely close to this.
So, all the way up to the topgovernment, I think there needs
to be a lot more discussionabout how we govern, how we as a
society transition to like kindof cope and deal with this.
Right now, it's it's all, it'sall game.

(01:08:41):
It's basically a very powerfulcalculator, it's a very powerful
tool and it's starting tobecome more and more agentic.
Uh, I would use that word evenif agents were to weren't a
buzzword.
Um, it's becoming moreautonomous, but at some point in
the near future we're going tobe faced with basically our

(01:09:01):
digital counterparts that are ascapable or more than we are,
and I don't think anyone is veryfew people like truly grasp
what that is going to entail andhow we're going to.
No one knows how we're going toadapt for sure.
The hope is, of course, andthis is where a lot of the
research and alignment is goinginto.
The hope is is that we are ableto structure these systems in

(01:09:23):
such a way that they remain onour side, to like kind of put it
bluntly.
There's a lot of great, greatthinkers out there who are sort
of like pushing the boundaryhere, who I would certainly
recommend checking out.
Jeffrey Hinton he's like thegodfather of AI, he's like
someone to listen to.
Eliezer Udowski I don't know ifthat's the right pronunciation

(01:09:47):
of his last name, but I wouldsay he's kind of a quote unquote
doomer.
He's got the pessimistic viewon it, but it's really, really
well thought out.
The Leopold Oshchenbrenner'sessays and I don't know if I'm
pronouncing these names right,it's rare that I say them out
loud, I just usually read them.
He has the situationalawareness essay, which is
extremely well, in my opinion,extremely well thought out, so

(01:10:10):
there should certainly be moreawareness of it.
People should be thinking aboutit.
Of course, I'm really gunningfor the bull case here.
Right, there are a lot ofincredible things that could
come out of it.
That's going to be the positionthat the leaders of these
companies, like Sam Altman andDario and everyone, are pushing
for.
So that's the camp that I sitin too, but I do think that

(01:10:31):
we're going to need to approachit with a pretty high degree of
just like intelligence andprudence here.
Yeah, government is going toneed to get involved and start
thinking about this at a highlevel, for sure.

Klara (01:10:44):
Yeah, so it seems like you're leaning towards the
positive side, but thinkingabout the potential risks.

I just, like you know, hope for the best plan for
the worst.
It's kind of the situation.

Klara (01:10:54):
And you have partnership actually with OpenAI.
You're using, I'm guessing,some of their technology or
models for your product as well.

Yes, we partner with them.
We have the distinction of, asfar as I'm aware, being the only
MarTech company who's partneredwith them directly in training
models, which is kind of cool.
So, yeah, we worked with themto train a fine-tuned model for
writing website code,essentially like creating on
brand style and brand alignedcode for variations for your

(01:11:23):
website, which is kind of neat.

Klara (01:11:25):
Yeah, so I'm guessing you are leaning towards SAM,
because otherwise you wouldn'tpartner with OpenAI.
But there's a lot of peoplelike Ilan and Jensen you
mentioned all of the leadersthat are obviously preaching as
well as stating the risks of AIand how it can overcome our
analytical thinking or thewisdom of humans.

(01:11:45):
Do you have a leader that youlook up to?
Or it could be either of thoseor somebody else.

when you look at kind of the entrepreneurship,
what you're building and kind ofyour path ahead, yeah, I
definitely look up to differentpeople in different ways, like I
have an immense amount ofrespect for, for instance, like
elon musk's kind of grit, uh andjust like tenacity.
I don't know if I wouldnecessarily like hold him as
like, uh, the most stable.

(01:12:13):
You know the grounded presencein someone's life, necessarily
he's he's certainly I definitelyfeel like he thrives at chaos
and throwing cards in the airand then realigning them yeah
yeah, yeah, which, to be fair, Ialso like chaos sometimes too,
but but, yeah, like, everyonehas their strength and the
people that you mentioned allhave just like an insanely

(01:12:34):
immense amount of strength inrespective areas that have made
them very successful, and socertainly I try to like learn
what I can from people like that.
I wouldn't say that I have likeone camp or another necessarily
, but, yeah, try to takeinspiration where I can get it.

Klara (01:12:50):
And so there's lots going on now although I realized I've
been saying this for years,since the duration of the
podcast and the world seems tojust keep spinning wilder and
wilder.
Maybe that's just the way ourlives are now, even just with AI
and what we have beenmentioning.
What would you want to inspirepeople to be doing more of, or
less of?

Yeah, I think now more than ever, it's a really
great time to just be likefollowing your curiosity.
It's like building stuff, likeit's so easy to build stuff now,
especially with the help of AI.
But I firmly believe that, likepeople are here on Earth to
like create things and becreative and discover and, you
know, make meaning out of things, and curiosity is kind of like

(01:13:35):
the compass that helps us to dothat.
Um, amazingly, we're living ina time, more than ever, where we
are empowered to, I guess, likeact on our curiosity, like want
to build something, some somecool new app.
You can do that in a weekendwith with some of these coding
platforms like lovable orreplator cursor.

(01:13:57):
Um, if you want to learn aboutastrophysics as though it's
taught to you like a highschooler, you can ask oh three
to do that, and it'll do apretty freaking good job at it
too.
This is a such a rare andunique time where, like, what we
do is, uh is is stillmeaningful.
We haven't been supplanted byAI yet and, at the same time, we

(01:14:20):
have the ability to execute ourvision and let our curiosity
just explore more than ever.
So that's something I just likelet yourself loose is kind of
the short answer here.

Klara (01:14:31):
Love it, I guess.
Just one more follow-up youmentioned quite a bit of AI,
some of the new tools.
Is there anything that you'replaying with now that's really
exciting, whether it's an app orsomething that you're testing.
You would suggest people tofollow or test out on their own
to just check out some of the AI, gen, ai advancements.

Yeah, actually, my advice here is not about finding
the apps.
It's about sufficiently goingdeep enough and exploring what
they can do.
Like everyone already knowsabout ChatGPT and Cloud, but not
that many people know that youcan build an entire web

(01:15:14):
application in Cloud or inChatGPT web application in cloud
or in chat gpt, or you can liketeach yourself an entire
language in these platforms, oryou can like create new recipes
like people just need to explore.
Like we've already been givenfire by prometheus.
Like the fire is already there.
We don't need like some newlike fireplace to put it into or
some new whatever we we justneed to like explore how it's

(01:15:37):
burning.
You know what I mean?
Like just explore theproperties of it.
Ai is extremely adaptive andmalleable and like multi-purpose
, and there's actually a musclethat you build which is like
figuring out when to go in andask.
You know either this used to bedone with, like with people,
right, you'd have the muscle oflike when to delegate something,

(01:15:59):
or when to ask for help, orwhen to have someone show you
how to do something.
That same principle can beapplied to ai.
Like you ever?
You have that like uh, thatmoment where like oh, I'm stuck
just like ask, ask a model.
I mean it depends on theproblem, obviously, but there's
just like so many problems thatare very easily solvable with
these models now, and so peoplejust, I think, need to get

(01:16:21):
better at building that muscle,because we have it as a tool now
.
It's like kind of an extensionof ourselves if we would let it
be A really powerful one at that.
So people just need to exploreit more deeply.

Klara (01:16:31):
Is it part of your Stanford AI class curriculum?
Maybe I should sign up for it.

Yeah, that one's a little bit niche.
It should be a class.

Klara (01:16:38):
It's like you could create a new one around that.
That would be exciting.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely try to push for that.
And I also talk about thedangers of relying too much on
AI in that class, particularlyfor engineers, it's very
tempting to just like let ittake care of everything and not
even thinking about what.
What it's doing which?
Um?
Eventually that might actuallybe fine.
Um, as ai gets extremelypowerful, it's almost as though
you become an engineeringmanager and you don't actually

(01:17:04):
have to know the code.
But it's not quite there yet.
You still should be using it asan assistive tool, not not a
full-on replacement yeah, I canimagine.

Klara (01:17:13):
with coding the hallucination can be weird.
Even chedji bd makes up stufffor me at times.
Josh, thank you so much.
I want to respect your timebecause I know we're over, but
this was fantastic you lettingme in on your Grand Slam journey
that you have been building,and a super fan of what you're
building at Cofframe Hope tostay in touch.
If you have a trip to Austin,please let me know.

(01:17:34):
Would love to catch up inperson for coffee, or I'll do
the same if I'm in Bay Area andyou're there and not traveling.
What's the best way for anyonewho wants to get in touch to
reach you?
Can I add your LinkedIn profile, or is there any of your
favorite social media that youprefer to use?

Sure, yeah, linkedin is good.
I think it's Josh Payne with anX instead of the A, so
P-X-Y-N-E and thenjoshcoframecom is my email.
Feel free to hit me up withquestions.
Happy to try to be helpful ashelpful as I can, but thanks for
having me on the show.
This is such a pleasure.
It's great to have this amazingconversation.
I'd love to catch up whenyou're in SF or I'm down in

(01:18:11):
Texas, maybe visiting my family.
That'd be great.

Klara (01:18:14):
That'd be fantastic.
Thank you, and actually lastquestion, can I add your
symphony, the one you composed,as the ending of this episode?
I don't know if it needs to becleared through IP rights.

Oh man, it's not very good, but you can.
If you want to, you can.
Yeah, I appreciate that, allright.

Klara (01:18:32):
I'll add it.
I thought it was great.
All right, I'll add it.
I thought it was great.
I listened to it before, soI'll give a peek for listeners
to the music talent and whatyou're able to create, also on
the music side.

Appreciate that Awesome, if you enjoyed this
episode.

Klara (01:18:45):
I want to ask you to please do two things that would
help me greatly.
One, please consider leaving areview on Apple Podcasts,
spotify or any other podcastingplatform that you use to listen
to this episode.
Two, please share this podcastwith a friend who you believe
might enjoy it as well.
It is a great way to remindsomeone you care about them by

(01:19:07):
sharing a conversation theymight be interested in.
Thank you for listening ©BF-WATCH TV 2021.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
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Klara Jagosova

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}86. Josh Payne⏐Coframe: The AI-Powered Future of Digital Experiences