Colorado Innovators: Robin Thurston, CEO and Founder at Outside Interactive Inc.

[00:00:00] In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan Caruso sits down with Robin Thurston, CEO of Outside and one of the most innovative builders in outdoor media and technology, for a wide-ranging part two conversation on the explosive growth of Outside Festival, the future of AI, and why getting people outdoors has never been more important. What began as an event built around 18,000 tickets is quickly becoming one of the largest outdoor festivals in the country.

[00:00:25] Robin shares the vision behind Outside Days, the strategy driving its rapid momentum, and how Outside is redefining the intersection of media, technology, wellness, and adventure. Let's poke the bear to kick off the conversation.

[00:00:42] Some people seem to always find time, no matter how busy they are, to give back, and you are a poster child for that, as were the other panelists, all four of which extraordinarily busy building their own companies, having their own families, yet carve out time to give back to people who are trying to carve their way in life. So I want to thank you for that. Yeah, no, it was my pleasure. I like doing those things and gives me, you know, sort of a dual side of it.

[00:01:09] I get to learn some stuff from other people that are there and get a chance to, you know, obviously tell some more stories and try to, you know, help guide some of those people. And, you know, good questions in the audience that, you know, come back and you start thinking about, you know, and go back and hopefully, you know, that plays into, you know, decisions and strategy and things like that that you're making. So I like doing them. Yeah, we'll come back to the one comment that the one individual made at the end about how... Sustainability? ...sad.

[00:01:38] Oh, the sad one. Oh yeah, the sad one was interesting. We'll come back. Now I want to talk about other stuff about AI and how they're affecting kind of what your passion is, how you see it affecting outdoor activities, how people spend their time. So I want to talk a lot about that. But what I want to start with is the outside days. Yeah. Outside days is, first of all, you were one of my first guests on the Barrowars. You're maybe the third or fourth that is a repeat guest at this point.

[00:02:07] And I really appreciate it for that too. We also partnered together on Endeavor. We also partnered together on outside. I'm a small investor in your excellent company. I always appreciate the support. Yeah. So thank you on a lot of different fronts. We also golfed together, had some great times. I still think about that. Very memorable. Last August. Oh yeah, that was a good one. So much fun. But outside days. Outside days is coming up and it's spectacular.

[00:02:33] And it's only in year three yet where you've already taken this, you and your team have already taken this, is incredible. And I want to really break that down and understand it in its full extent. I got to experience it last year. But I didn't experience the whole thing, which I'm going to do much more so this year. Yeah. So I'm super excited about it. And I really want to spend a good 10, 15 minutes on outside days to get this started. So tell us about the inspiration. Tell us what it is.

[00:03:00] Tell us the very many different dimensions of it. Exactly when and where it is. Maybe let's start there. Yeah, I know. It's coming up soon. It's crazy to think. I mean, I hope it's actually not doing what it's doing right now, which is snowing outside. I think you'll be safe. I hope so. By early generation. If there's anything I get really paranoid at 30 days out is the weather. You know, the inspiration for outside days was really like, I lived in Austin for seven years and I've been to, I don't know, 11 south bys or 10 or 11.

[00:03:29] And, you know, I, I felt like when I started outside interactive, like I was just sort of surprised that there were only B2B events. There wasn't really anything from a big consumer perspective. And, you know, as I started meeting with all, whether they were advertising partners, whether they were partners in some other area of the business, you know, I just kept hearing from people. Oh my God, it'd be so great if there was some type of consumer event in the outdoor space.

[00:03:54] And so, you know, I think it was four years ago, a couple of team members and I went CJ being one of them, you know, and started talking to the state of Colorado about, you know, look, could we rally support from the state and the city to do something here that was, you know, south by southwest, but for the outdoors.

[00:04:14] And, you know, so when we started it, I mean, one is that the city and the state certainly leaned in, they made help, they helped us with things like permitting and, you know, getting access to Civic Center Park, which is not that easy, actually. And, you know, you know, certainly helped us with some of the venues and, you know, getting support from, you know, the governor and, you know, some senators and, you know, generally sort of the OREC department, Connor Hall specifically sort of helped rallying that those, those, those areas.

[00:04:44] But, and I want to take the time to just amplify because cities don't have to do that. You know, they should. No. For people like you and me, it's like, why wouldn't you? But some don't. I mean, we're working with the city of Boulder on something similar that we'll come back to. And they want to be helpful, but, but it's funny how they're, like, I just got an email from one of the key people there apologizing for taking so long and get back to us because they're really busy.

[00:05:10] Like, okay, we're, it's just like, okay, I get it. You're really busy. But, you know, you could get back to us and we could work more collaboratively on this. And, and, you know, they, they do, you know, the cities benefit from this stuff. I mean, I think the, if you look at the economic impact of these things, like they're real. They're, it's very real in hotel rooms and small business, like it's very real. You know, I do think they obviously.

[00:05:38] And artists, because we're going to get into your full format and there's artists. You've brought a lot of things together and it's going to feature a whole bunch of artists as well. I mean, even, even, you know, so the, so the format, the format that we went after was, you know, how do you bring music, film, experiential, like real things in the outdoors? Like, you know, whether it's, we have the, you know, health and wellness area that has cold plunging and saunas too.

[00:06:01] You know, this year we'll have a big kids area that has a lot of different activities, the bike park, the, you know, certainly like, you know, if you think about like this year, we're going to have a Jeep experience. It's going to have a whole drive area that Jeep is setting up. You know, we're talking about fly fishing exhibits, the climbing walls that North Face had and things like that.

[00:06:21] And then the speakers and having these, you know, very iconic speakers like, you know, this year, Alex Hunnold and, you know, major sort of, you know, people like the Mary Beth Lawton, that's the CEO of REI. And, you know, others that are coming, you know, to really participate, but also bring that knowledge and share that with everybody from consumers that want to listen to it too on the B2B side. But, you know, so the consumer sort of framework of it was those four things.

[00:06:48] And the first year we did it, Dan, like I didn't really have any idea. We kind of thought about it a little bit like marketing. Like we were like, okay, like let's try to do this event. And, you know, we sold 18,000 tickets the first year. And I was like, what am I, 18,000 tickets? Like that's a freaking lot of people. And I think last year was just a testament to like the build on that. You know, in the first year, I think 90% of people said they were going to come back and buy tickets again. So we knew that we had, you know, whether you want to look at NPS scores or you just want to take the feedback in that we had built the right formula.

[00:07:18] And, you know, so last year was 35,000 people. I mean, this year, you know, we certainly believe that we added a third day of music this year. So Friday night is new for consumers. You know, last year we had already, we had launched the startup pitch day on Thursday, the B2B sort of, you know, industry summit on Friday, which we had the first year. And, but music started on Saturday with the, with the sort of overall event.

[00:07:44] This year we've, we've moved the music to Friday night, right. Sort of take, you know, from the B2B event or straight into the music. Which is good because you kind of flow right into it. Exactly. To the weekend. And I'm sure a lot of people, because you get a lot of people come in from out of town. Out of town. For the Thursday, Friday. Now it's easier from the, I'm going to stay for Friday night. To me, like the B2B people are getting more of the full experience.

[00:08:13] You know, in, in the interim, we, we bought a travel business. That's a, you know, fairly large SAS business that powers like veil.com and all Terra's sites and Whistler and, you know, now national parks and other things. And so we're having, we're adding a travel conference to the event. So we'll have a lot of travel people there. Like we have the, you know, Rob Katz from the CEO of veil speaking. And we have the CEO of our mark speaking and, you know, some big brands in that travel space. Let's break this down.

[00:08:44] Let's break it down. So the first day you consider the first day Thursday, or you also. So this year. Wednesday night. Yeah. So this year we'll have a startup dinner. And the specific date. Yeah. So, so this will be on, I want to make sure I get this right. I believe it's Wednesday's the 27th. So we'll do Wednesday, the 27th. We'll have a startup dinner night and sort of activation. The startup pitch day will be, you know, all day. On the startup dinner night.

[00:09:12] It's all the startups that are involved in the pitch that are, you know, here. It's a bunch of industry people that can sort of have time with them before they even get up on stage. And pitch like Shark Tank the next day. And how many companies get to do the pitch? So we had over, I think it was over 300 submissions. It's 100K prizes between a, you know, sort of a grant from a local agency that does marketing for them. Advertising on outside.

[00:09:41] And then a $25,000 cash check that they can obviously use to facilitate, you know, growth. And so there will be five finalists. So we'll have all five of those people come up and pitch on stage and obviously do like the whole Shark Tank, you know, sort of in winter panel of VCs and other industry people that will be judging that. And how did those five? So they got, so there was a, like, I was not part of the selection committee.

[00:10:07] There's, we, we, we had a group of, so the, the venture people that are on the panel that actually will select the final. And then the industry people, they were all part of that selection down from 300 into a list that obviously are the ones that were, you know, flying in and bringing here and, you know, doing the event. So that's all day Thursday. In addition on Thursday, we added this travel conference. So there's speakers on Thursday sort of simultaneously that, you know, some industry people. Dual tracks.

[00:10:37] Dual tracks. And then Friday, Thursday night is a CEO dinner and a bunch of other, there's another startup dinner, some other things that are happening on Thursday night. And then Friday is the all day B2B event starting early with all the speakers. Um, and then Friday night right into the music, um, um, and the stage and everything on Auraria campus, which is where it is at. And then Saturday and Sunday very much is the consumer event.

[00:11:04] Like it's, it really is, um, even though there's a lot of, uh, you know, outdoor industry people there, it's really about the consumers getting to experience those brands. But consumers, people are going to have a lot of fun at the festival. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on, lots of music. Speakers going, I mean, like REI last year, like even though Alex Hunnold, he's speaking again this year, but like last year he came and spoke, but even after he spoke to the big crowd, he went out and did many presentations at REI and at like our activation and other places.

[00:11:33] He went to the REI store, which is down the road at the, at Platte, you know, river, big store, big, you know, flagship store for them. And so there were a lot of like mini activations going on during the consumer event, the film festivals going on. You typically like, um, you know. And Sundance is going to be working with you on that. Is that true? Um, I'm not, yeah, I'm not a hundred percent. CJ would know better exactly what's going on. We are definitely working with them, but it's, it's a question of what is the level of detail. Gotcha. Gotcha.

[00:12:04] Gotcha. Hopefully I won't get in trouble with Sundance because we work a lot with them and I know they're, they're rightfully very careful. No, they've been great. They've been great. I mean, just the interaction and watching how they're building out Boulder, I think is, is also a lot we can learn from that too. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, uh, if someone wants to, and I want to get into your, your, uh, kind of higher level experience as well, understand how that's going to work.

[00:12:28] But if, if someone's interested, they're, you know, they're, uh, uh, in, they just love festivals, but they also are passionate about the outdoor industry. Uh, what is available to them and how would they participate? Yeah. So there's general admission. So like, and you can, even if, if you are just someone who wants to come to the B2B event, you were, you know, you can buy tickets to the B2B event. They're packaged together on the outside days, um, you know, website for purchasing.

[00:12:57] Um, you can buy just a three day ticket for the music and the experiential stuff of the speakers and the film festival starting Friday. So there's sort of a combination of packages that, you know, you can go on and sort of pick from whether you're a consumer, whether you're, you know, uh, an industry outdoor person, even we have lots of non outdoor industry people coming, um, travel, you know, events, or you just want to have a blowout weekend in downtown Denver. Exactly. And, and so all those tickets are available to search for outside days.

[00:13:26] And go to the ticket site and you can purchase the bundles and the tickets and everything. Yep. And then tell us a little bit more about the experience that you're creating this year for those who want to, and are able to kind of, uh, spend a little bit more money and get a bit more out of it. Yeah. So we have this new, I mean, we, some, there are certainly some, um, you know, organizations that are doing their own VIP. We have a VIP area that will have very, you know, sort of exclusive access to the stage

[00:13:54] and viewing, but we created this new concept called the Colorado club, which is, uh, you know, sort of a, a, a unique way for businesses to, um, you know, whether it be their partners or their employees, give them something sort of extra special. So the Colorado club will have, you know, it has its own area. It has its own VIP viewing area. Um, there will certainly be some, you know, uh, athletes and people that sort of show up in that area too.

[00:14:21] So we really created this as a sort of super VIP area for, uh, businesses to have access to kind of like, uh, you know, maybe a box experience would be for the nuggets or something like that, but, you know, over the, over the three days, so they can really give their employees or partners, um, full access to outside days. Yep. And I'm, I'm definitely going to be there for that and enjoying it. We'll see you there for sure. Yes. Really getting the full breadth of the festival. So hope to see a lot of familiar faces and meet some new friends as well.

[00:14:51] Uh, very much looking forward to it. We're expecting a lot of people, so it should be, it should be a ton of fun. Great. And how did you go from like nothing to you'll probably have more than 50,000 people this year, I suspect. Yeah, it, it'll, it's, so I think, like I said, I, part of me just believes it was the formula, like what, what at some level there was a gap in the market. You know, was there a, a, a consumer event for the outdoor industry? So there was just this gap that no one was really filling. So I think to some extent we're filling that in.

[00:15:21] Um, but I also just think the formula and then what I would call the execution. So like not only our team, but like we have groundswell out of Chicago, that's doing all of the, you know, on the ground, like the stage set up, the activations with the partners, et cetera. Like they've been a great partner to get this ready. Um, you know, our partner, um, on the music side, super fly has done a great job of building the lineups.

[00:15:48] And so I think that's really like, we've, we've stepped up a lot in terms of the investment that we're making in the talent. Um, and that draws a certain number of people with it. Um, you know, like, you know, having bands like death cap for cutie and cage the elephant. I mean, these are, these are big, these are big bands. Right. So like, I think that's been a part of sort of creating that momentum too. But I do think, you know, if you go down, I mean, the other thing that I think is really important is we are allowing kids under 13 for free.

[00:16:15] So it's easy, easy decision for families to come down and, you know, spend the day down there and have their kids off their phones and, you know, be enjoying everything that's available to them. You know, so I, I think the combination of those things to me is why the arc has sort of, you know, happened so quickly. I mean, this is a business that, you know, again, three years ago was non-existent and will be, you know, probably likely over 10 million in revenue this year.

[00:16:40] Um, you know, it's, it's certainly been hyper growth for us on this front, but I do just think it's something needed. I think people really wanted it. Yep. And we'll come back to that in a broader theme way as well, because of, you know, the transformation our entire world is going through because of AI and how much more important experiential is. Yeah. Getting people out there and about and in your case, outside in general.

[00:17:08] I also think your branding really, you know, worked beautifully. I mean, it seems simple outside days, the name of your company is outside, but it's always seems simple after you have something that works. When you don't have something that works, it's like, I don't know if that's going to be the right one, but it really lands. I mean, you know, I'm going outside days is, uh, is just an easy expression. Uh, it's quickly going to be synonymous with, you know, downtown Denver is probably already the biggest festival in downtown Denver.

[00:17:37] And I think that's, that's really what, you know, I think, you know, whether it's the, you know, sort of the backup we've gotten from, you know, state and city representatives and, you know, things like the commerce chamber and things like that. Like, I, I, I think it's, um, uh, you know, I feel like Denver has really stepped up and supported it. And I think that's important. I think you need to be in a place that, you know, they recognize the value. And I mean, this year, again, we'll probably have nearly 30% of people coming from out of state.

[00:18:07] Um, you certainly some international people that are coming here for the event. Um, so, you know, our hope is that over time, you know, we continue seeing it expanding. I mean, right now we, we had to move from civic center to Auraria campus and there's some real advantages on Auraria that I think you'll see when you're down this year versus civic center before, but ultimately like we still believe that this could be over a hundred thousand people over a, you know, five, six day period. And, you know, that might mean multiple venues that might mean multiple places downtown.

[00:18:37] Maybe even sprawling into. Like from civic center to Auraria type of thing and have multiple stages and activations along the way and things like that. And so, um, you know, I, I think right now we just feel, I think the team feels very excited about the future. Yep. And let's do some nice call outs because, you know, I've been leading a bit of a charge where I'm, uh, asking our elected officials to behave differently when it comes to, uh, how

[00:19:03] to, um, enhance, not undermine, uh, Colorado's tech ecosystem. But in this case, uh, they've done extremely well. Governor Polis has leaned in, um, mayor Mike Johnson has leaned in, uh, senators have leaned in. Yeah. Yeah. So you've, uh, the, the teams behind them have leaned in. I think it's really helped. Like, so Connor Hall, who runs the outdoor recreation department for the state of Colorado.

[00:19:31] Um, I, I think it's really helped to have someone like that. And, you know, an industry where in Colorado outdoor rec is 17% of the economy. Um, it's a large portion of the jobs. Um, so I, I do think that fit and us being here like based here and the company here has helped us a lot. But I think having someone like Connor in, you know, in close to, you know, Polis and all of the sort of right political people, um, has helped build that support.

[00:20:01] Yeah. That's excellent. So let's, let's shift a bit and talk about, uh, AI and AI in particular, as it pertains to your mission as outside income, maybe as part of that, let's remind everyone, you know, what outside is, where it came from, what's the full scope of what you've now built. I mean, even in the short period of time, since we did the initial podcast. So now your business has grown on a couple of different dimensions, which is very interesting.

[00:20:28] Uh, and you know, in the context of AI, which is in, in this conversation is multidimensional is both how you create and deliver product, but also the importance of your mission as the world is going to be in humankind is going to be affected by AI. So a lot to cover there. Yeah. I, so just background on outside. So we, um, I started the company in 2018 really with this idea that there was, um, you

[00:20:58] know, there was a lot of friction in outdoor activity, like just to help people, whether they're brand new, getting into a new sport. Like, you know, I always say like a lot of people come to me for cycling advice just because I've been in cycling my whole life. You were a pro cyclist. Yeah, I was when I was young. Um, I'm not that fast anymore, but I still like to ride a lot. I still, I still like to ride about eight to 10,000 miles a year. So I'm still on the bike a lot, but you know, if I'm getting into kayaking, it's all new for me, right? Dan, like, I don't know the right equipment.

[00:21:27] I don't necessarily know where to go for a new, to be a new beginner and that process, there's a lot of friction, you know? And so the goal was really, how do we put these companies together knowing that the average person does three to five things a year and over a lifetime, they might do 12 to 15 different activities. How do we just make it easier? Everything from the moment you get inspired to do that new thing. And that could be through a piece of content. It could be through a, you know, a video, a film, uh, uh, a written long form article.

[00:21:56] When you get that moment of inspiration, how do we take you into activation? And that activation could be helping you find a ride out your back door today or a hike to an event that you're going to do to getting on a trip that might be a life-changing trip for you, you know, that you might go do, you know, could be hiking to Machu Picchu. It could be, you know, something that iconic, or it could be, Hey, I'm going, you know, I

[00:22:22] don't know, a couple of years ago, I did the Aspen to, um, uh, Crested Butte hike. Right. And it's an iconic hike. It's not that hard. It's like most people could go up there with a group of friends and do it, but how do we make sure you have the right equipment when you go on that, that you're prepared, like from a weather and, you know, sort of all the things that you're going to be dealing with so that what we don't want to have you have is a bad time. And the reason is that most people quit after they have a bad time. I don't care if it's camping, I don't care if it's running cycling.

[00:22:51] So how do we take out all the friction? And so we put 30 companies together to do that. You know, we have brands like outside magazine and outside television, and we have Warren Miller films and we have backpacker and velo and pink bike, but then how do you take people from there directly into the activation? And so the activation, like our mapping utilities, like map my fitness is some of what's new. I mean, you had some mapping, but you've expanded that. We've expanded and it continues to grow. Like we're growing subscribers there and, you know, adding new features.

[00:23:20] How many subscribers do you have on all your mapping? So all subscriptions across the platform and the majority come in through the mapping applications is a little bit over a million subscribers on the platform. Paying subscribers. Those are people that are paying for some type of membership, whether it be a vertical membership or it be our bundle outside plus. Um, and so the spirit of bringing all those things together was just like, how do you make it easier? How do you build these communities? How do you make sure that as you're getting into something new or you're progressing along

[00:23:48] that curve, that it is a, you know, again, that you, you were having a positive experience and therefore want to do it again. And you want to share that. That we know when people share that content, you know, whether it's a, let's say I go for a mountain bike ride today and I take some pictures and trail forks and you're a friend of mine on trail forks, like that you might want to go do that thing. Like you're like, oh, that's a really cool route. You just did. I want to go do that thing. So sharing and the, you know, building up those communities. But you have a long history in that you actually created some of the early apps. Yeah. Matt, my fitness.

[00:24:17] We, I mean, literally when, I mean, we were two of the Matt, my run and Matt, my ride were apps number 98, 99 in the, in the app store when it launched. And, you know, that was, I mean, certainly it was good timing. I always say like luck is a part of entrepreneurship and man, we hit that curve like as, as well as we possibly could. You know, and while the game has changed a little bit, the thing about AI, when you were talking about that, like the way I view AI in, in, in, in certainly in context to our companies

[00:24:47] is like, I think it's going to make a lot of these things even take more friction out. Like, how do I make it more personalized for you? Make sure you're really getting what you're looking for, that you get to it as quickly as possible so that you then can spend all the, the, the positive time actually going to do that thing. So, you know, I'm pretty bullish on discovery, but one thing AI is not going to do, Dan, is AI is not going to go on the hike for you.

[00:25:13] So like when you go, like, I don't worry about say the mapping applications, like from a market share perspective, if anything, I think we're just going to get, like, we're going to grow because I do think people are going to have more time. And I think that even the example I was giving up on stage, like the other day, I literally was on a bike ride. I, I kicked off Claude before I left to, I've been writing my own apps recently, like just because of how easy it is. And I was writing an app. And it's kind of, I mean, there's a certain kind of fulfillment.

[00:25:43] Oh, it's so cool. It's like, it's funny because you mentioned earlier today, you mentioned how one of the things you did early when you got in post-cycling is become a true expert at Excel. Yeah. I think you said Excel and, and I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I have an Excel book with, with a professor at, down at CU. Yeah. Not, not since Excel, because I used to build some really complex stuff on Excel that I was really proud of.

[00:26:12] Uh, but not since those a long time ago when I used to do that, have I felt this fulfilled building stuff on a computer. It's amazing. It's just, I drove my team nuts. They, they've seen me go crazy a few times, just building out these applications. And of course, uh, they're not as secure as they were supposed to be. And this is, this is one of the challenges for sure. So I'm learning all the, uh, not all of them enough of the tools of at least the vibe kind of coding that they'd be dangerous. Yeah.

[00:26:42] I mean, and so, you know, this example of like, I go out for a ride and, and Claude gets stuck and I'm able to, I'm literally stopped at an intersection, noticed that it was basically frozen and kicked off the process while I'm on the ride and then just started riding again. Right. Or, you know, another good example of a great use of AI is like, we're using it to convert, um, all of our content from text to audio as an example. And so now if I want to listen to 10 long form stories on outside magazine, I can do that

[00:27:10] while I'm doing a hike, right? Like that just wasn't possible before or translation. Like in order for, if you think about, we have six brands that are 50 years or older to, to translate that library of content historically would have cost tens of millions of dollars. Now we're able to convert all that into other languages. So hopefully again, we can expose people in South America in Spanish to the content that, you know, potentially inspires them to get outdoors. Because the content you have is international.

[00:27:40] It's evergreen. And it's evergreen. It lasts forever. I mean, if I'm writing an article about Yellowstone National Park, it doesn't get old. It's not like news on the New York Times. Like it doesn't, it's literally going to be relevant to someone a decade from now, two decades from now type thing. And so are the stories, right? The stories of, you know, people scaling Everest or, you know, going down, you know, rivers or, you know, things like this. They don't, these stories don't really get old. They're very evergreen.

[00:28:08] And so being able to translate that automatically into other languages using AI at a very, very low cost, huge value from my perspective of inspiring people to get outdoors. But again, going back to my point in the mapping apps, AI is not going to go out and do the hike for you. And it's not going to train for you either. No. So like- It might encourage you to train. It might, it might even- Or it might give you a little bit more free time to go do those things. Maybe give a lot of people-

[00:28:34] If you're bullish on, you know, the future of work and, you know, where AI could help, I do think it could mean, you know, in the short run, for me, it hasn't less meant hours working. But in the long run, it might. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, people have some choices there too, because, you know, I don't think I've worked as much as I've worked in the past six to eight weeks.

[00:29:01] I think I've worked more hours in that six to eight week timeframe. You'd have to go back maybe to the early days of Zale since I've worked that much. But this has been out of like joy and passion and fulfillment and excitement of like just, holy shit, I can't believe I could do this stuff. And looking for areas to apply it that are meaningful. Yeah. Yeah. That won't last forever. It's like a new toy maybe, but it's a new toy that is, you know, it's kind of like when Atari came out and he started using Atari for the first time. Holy shit.

[00:29:31] Asteroids, man. It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, I mean, they sort of talked about this at the event today too, like the speed at which everything is moving. I think, you know, again, you can, you could sort of be concerned about that or you can lean into that and say, okay, I'm going to try to engage as much as I can, you know, in learning and, you know, exploring these tools. And I've been exactly the same way. I mean, I, I just, some of the things that you can do with it, like, you know, I, I, one

[00:30:01] of the things that I don't think people are leveraging enough is like, I've created these sort of multi-agent frameworks where you have like different critics, right. And you, and you allow them to go in and critique what you're doing. Like, you know, I did one for an app that I was putting together where once I got the specification before I even started writing the app, like I said, you know, I want you to be a, you know, a top iOS engineer. I wanted you to be a top product engineer.

[00:30:29] I want you to be a McKinsey analyst. I want you to be a, you know, a top designer and looking at the, the criticism from each and be a critic of this product and like, what's missing, what's not like looking at that multi-agent framework is just fascinating because you're like, do you know how much time it would have taken me to go actually talk to people in those professions? And, and by the way, even if you ask them to test your app, a lot of them will just like

[00:30:58] delete the presentation, you know, they're like, oh, I don't have time, you know, whatever. And so I just think there's some really fascinating uses that, you know, to me are, it's pretty exciting. It's pretty fun to play around with. Yeah. You know, the one example I gave actually to my team who was sitting right in front of us says very similar to what you just said is, is, you know, I encourage them to go on

[00:31:22] to, uh, Claude and say, uh, and I'll use a little bit of improvise a little bit using some of your words. You know, I want to be not me, but the team, I want to be the best damn producer and promoter of podcasts as exists because my job is to take the bearish words and make it kind of 10 times more kind of whatever. Yeah. And, you know, have it teach you quickly and guide you on how to be an extraordinarily

[00:31:51] capable and experienced podcast producer. And it will probably give you a hell of a lot of guidance that will turn you into like trying to figure it out on your own to like actionable steps, actionable steps, go do try this first. I mean, the other thing I tell a lot of people, I didn't say this up on stage, Dan, but like I never like, unless it's like a very simple prompt, like I'm using example, like I need the last 10 tour de France winners, like listed out.

[00:32:21] I'll just type that as a prompt. Most of the time I don't ever type a prompt. I ask it to build a prompt for me because the LLMs need context. So like, you know, in the case of like, you know, to go walk me through that. So, so the year in your example, where you're saying that you go and then you type a prompt. That's like, Hey, I want you to be an expert, a top 1% podcast expert.

[00:32:48] Instead, the, what I would do is I would say, I want to build the best possible. And most context prompt helped me write that prompt as if I was a top 1% podcast producer and marketer. And then you look at what it builds for you. It is a far more contextualized prompt. That's going to give you even better results. So a lot of times I'm not writing the prompt.

[00:33:14] I'm asking it to write the prompt for me, maybe making some changes in that prompt before actually put in the full prompt. But the results are astoundingly different. Yeah. Yeah. Of this entire podcast, what we're talking about right now, I think can be extraordinarily important to so many people because the skill of how to use AI, I mean, that's a true skill.

[00:33:40] And some people are getting it really quick and they're getting how to really unleash the power in a way that makes what they produce with AI unique to them and very powerful. A lot of other people are having trouble, like how to use it as anything more than a search engine. Or maybe it's even a bit of uncertainty, shyness, awkwardness. I don't really want to talk to it. And what you hear is like, no, talk to it. Don't type, talk. Talk, yeah.

[00:34:08] And don't worry about exactly how your words, you can mumble something and it'll turn into a good sentence. So just tell what you're trying to get it to achieve. I want you to, I got these ideas here and I want to turn that into something and give it a chance and like, wow. You know, and if you learn how to really interact with it and free flow with it and I like the expression vibe with it, it could do so much. But I think so many people have trouble letting themselves go there. It's almost like.

[00:34:36] Well, or, or even like going back to the Excel analogy, I think a lot of people maybe even have tried prompting say a year ago and they were like, well, it's not really good. I didn't get back what I wanted. And they've almost like given up. They haven't like reinvested. But I look at something like co-work, right? On Claude. And I'm just like, you know, I know open clause sort of exploded and I tried, you know, setting up that. And I was like, there's some good things in here.

[00:35:04] But when I look at something like co-work, I mean, there are just things that before, if I had to ask someone to do, or I had to hire someone new to do it, or like, I just never did it. Like that's the, the one thing that I don't think people think about with AI is the essentially lost opportunity cost of things that you can do with it that you won't do if you don't have it. It's not like you're going to go hire another person.

[00:35:33] It's not like you're going to ask your, you know, team to do that. So like a really good example is like, I have in co-work, I have a bunch of scheduled stuff that comes on Monday. That's like everything from what's happened this week with my competitors to, you know, like, you know, here's an outline for going to my calendar, going to my Gmail, tell me like this week, how to prepare for this week. Do I use all of it?

[00:35:59] No, but there's a lot of good little tidbits in there that I'm like, this is really helpful to me. And I wouldn't have done this normally. I would have gone in less prepared. Same thing. Like, I mean, we were talking before about like, if I'm coming to see you, Dan, and I don't know you, I mean, I'm now it's so easy to prepare. Like, I mean, I'm going to DC and New York and I'm speaking at an event in DC and like, I'm preparing by like getting to know all the speakers better and like backgrounds on them and things like that.

[00:36:29] And by the way, you know what I did to do that? I, all I did was load. I took the PDF from the, from the thing and I basically, and then they also sent us the like participation list. I just loaded that up in a claw and I'm like, help me get ready for this outdoor recreation round table. And it pulls all the names. It pulls LinkedIn profiles. It pulls like, here's some dynamic of businesses that are working together. You know, again, I just would have never done that before.

[00:36:56] That's the, the, the power users of it are figuring that out and steroids. Most people aren't though. They're not realizing how much, um, and most use Claude at this point myself, how much Claude is tapping into so many different sources and how quickly it can make sense of, can give you something like that you can work with. Like, holy shit, that would have taken me so much time that I wouldn't have done it.

[00:37:23] Like one of my side projects is, you know, it's been quite visible. It's been stuff I've been doing on the political side, which, you know, I try to avoid politics, uh, you know, in terms of getting involved with it, but, you know, felt a need to do that right now. Uh, and it led me to do a whole bunch of stuff. There is zero chance that I'd have done this if it wasn't for Claude, because I wouldn't have had time to do it. I wouldn't want to spend that much time doing it, but now I'm doing stuff that just on the side that is, you know, of, of, I think real significance to the state of

[00:37:53] Colorado, the people in Colorado. No, very meaningful. Very, yeah. But that, there's zero chance I would have done anything but maybe scratched the surface. But now it's like, shit, I could do a ton of this on my own, including building a website, you know, building kind of research documents, uh, iterating with a bunch of people, uh, to get their input and then be able to incorporate their input and do it, you know, real quickly. It's incredible. I'm going to tell you. Yeah. I think the one, the one thing I'd add on there, Dan, like probably the, the thing I'm

[00:38:19] most concerned about though, is like the, the, the, the stuff that I see where people are not going in and critically themselves reflecting on it. Right. So like, I think you could see that. Yeah. People don't realize how quick you could see. I mean, cause it doesn't take a lot of like, you know, having the wrong information in there or the con it's out of context. You could see when someone's lazy, if they just ran something to Claude and gave you what Claude said. Output. They didn't even go in and edit or put their own thoughts on top of it.

[00:38:49] You can see that so quickly. So I think that part is like the part of it that I really encourage people like, you know, don't ever. You own the content. You own the content. You own the creativity. You own the message. You own the deliverable. And I think if you, if you are going to take something a hundred percent out, like one thing, this is something, uh, another YPO friend of mine suggested, which I have been doing is like, if I am going to send somebody something out that I like built a prompt or sent, but I don't have time to review.

[00:39:17] I'm literally saying in the email, I just want to be clear. This is coming from my agent, my AI agent. This is not, I have not, I like, I will say this in the email. I have not reviewed this yet. I do like, you know, or I briefly reviewed it and you know, like, but you got it. You got to make sure that if you're sending it out as your work product, it's you. So yeah, no, it's, uh, I, I haven't done too much of that, but when I do it, my, my agent's called edge. So it's edge.

[00:39:45] I'm Dan's AI chief of staff or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. They know that it's, you know, that I didn't, I didn't really review it early. Uh, but that's more for like quick messages. I want to put a quick story. I won't include the names to protect the guilty. I told you this earlier, but it's a good, I think it's a good story. Uh, so someone, uh, you know, drove from Denver to meet me here in person because they wanted to meet in person. They were told, uh, they're head of an organization.

[00:40:14] They were told by their, uh, a couple of members of their board that, you know, they should come out and meet with me. They would like to get me on the board. They'd like me to contribute some money. So the person drives over all the way here and begins the conversation within like 30 seconds. I can tell he had no idea who I was, what I did other than in the most, you know, cursory ways. And I said, do you, have you done any kind of, he's like, well, I thought we'd talk about that. I'm like, so you didn't like do any digging.

[00:40:41] I mean, to try to learn kind of a little bit more about who I am and kind of why they told you, you should come talk to me and where the relevant says, no, I figured we could use this time for it. Like, well, I don't really have time to kind of go through the whole thing, educate me on something you, I said, do you, uh, do you, uh, use AI? He's like, Hey, I got a 30 year old who does that for me. Like, Oh, that's good. I'm like, you do realize if you'd gotten an AI and spent less than 10 minutes, you could

[00:41:08] have learned everything you need to learn to make this a really, you know, productive, constructive conversation. And by the way, even prompts the questions that he could have brought to you. Yeah. Right. Based on your background. The good news is it was an hour meeting that ended in 15 minutes. So hopefully you use the other 45 minutes to get a subscription to Claude and learn how to use it. Boy, is that like a, uh, a commercial for Claude? I, I am so impressed by the technology though.

[00:41:35] Like I, I, I definitely, um, I don't, it's sort of like Excel. I, I don't really at this point imagine a world where you don't have it. Yeah. And then I want to come back to this, but I want to talk a little more about outside before we, we do. And, uh, the other thing you mentioned today was you guys have a lot of content in your library. Uh, some content is films that got filmed a long time ago and sound that was put on those films a long time ago with AI, you could bring kind of that content forward in time. Right.

[00:42:04] Yeah. I mean, and it's, it's, it's not only things like remastering and, you know, like really, you know, cleaning up the quality and things of that nature, but it's like also like even turning certain parts of that content into, um, text for, you know, could be new content that lives on the sites or, you know, one of the greatest things that I like, uh, these are some tools on the social media side, but like if you take a long form piece of video

[00:42:33] and you want to turn that into a bunch of, you know, snippets that are used in social media, I mean, it's never been easier to get them into the right formats to, you know, to pull out the right stuff. I'm, you still have to review it. I go back to like, you can't just on outcome. Yeah. You have to make sure the outcome is what you wanted, but the ability to get that cut down in a way that's, you know, again, having the right, um, you know, layovers for text

[00:43:01] on that video that then is going to pop and social and things like that. Like, it's just never been easier to do that. And, you know, I think when you have a, you know, obviously we have a lot of strong brands, but you have a lot of great brands being able to like lever them up. Like I will tell you a lot of written content, a lot of magazines that were around forever. And even by the way, eventually turning that from text into even video is going to be much more possible.

[00:43:25] Um, and we're experimenting with a lot of that stuff, but like, I think about the, you know, even something really powerful, like in our use case of text to audio, like whether, and by the way, now it's super easy to turn text into a podcast text into like, you know, multi language video. Yeah, exactly. Or a podcast with video where they'd say, hey, I generate it with all the content you have. This one wants to learn about something and they want to learn by watching a YouTube video on it.

[00:43:55] You could take text from 10 years ago and turn it into a watchable YouTube video. Exactly. And so I think that's to me in the use cases of being able to like go out and listen to long form articles while you're on a hike. Like those are great uses because I know people are outside instead of reading that inside on a computer or on their phone. Um, so I, I don't know. I just, I think there's so many great uses specifically for our category and how I think

[00:44:20] about the evolution of people spending more time in the outdoors that will be quite powerful. I think they will really help people. And I, and I think the other thing it unleashes, um, it's people who are very creative. Like let's use the example where you have all this content, you know, from all these years, a lot of it in written form. Some of it is in photography, some in video, you know, someone who's very, very creative

[00:44:47] who can figure out how do I take that and bring that forward in a way that, you know, where, you know, it's worth more than the time I have to put into it. So I can create value for myself as a, as a professional, uh, creative professional that would be valuable for outside and otherwise, you know, it wouldn't be worth investing in. But someone, you know, some army of people could be like, I'm going to be able to take

[00:45:12] that, you know, and monetize it, uh, you know, by using technology and using the content that outside owns and bring that forward in a way that creates value for people who are willing to, you know, uh, you know, use in a way that can be monetized. You could create kind of, yeah, I mean, I think there's, I think there's going to be new, there's going to be new monetization. I mean, everything from like, you know, leveraging video libraries to train AI models to new businesses

[00:45:41] that come off of that because it's either, you know, shortened down or, or remodified into a new format. All of those to me are like new business opportunities. And again, I go back to the global one, which is translation is super powerful just by taking what we have today and giving more people access to it. Yeah. But, but a creative person has to architect that all the way to what are we going to do? What are we going to, and then how's it going to be consumed in a way that people are going

[00:46:10] to want to consume it at a volume that's going to be worth the effort of doing that? And you still need like very creative people. Yeah. I still, I think the, look, I think there is a lot of fear, but I think that there's a lot of opportunity because I still think great storytelling and the creative process is a really important part of it to get to authenticity. So like, I just don't see the world where people are not involved in creating that, that very

[00:46:38] authentic storytelling process, no matter what format it's in. Yep. So I want to talk about experiences, experiences that start with being active and start with being outdoors and, and marry that with kind of, you know, there's two things that AI is going to potentially contribute to that. One, hopefully as people will have more time to do it while still having, you know, financial

[00:47:06] success with their professional life, but more time to be outside. And then two is, and this is where I want you to talk a bit. How can AI create more experiences for people who want to be active, want to be engaged, want to be around other people in a physical sense? How do you see AI enabling new opportunities to engage and be active, be healthy, have reasons

[00:47:35] to be outside, reasons to be with other people? I think one thing that I'm pretty excited about is like, and we're seeing this, like everybody from function health to, you know, there's, there's just so many people that are doing large scale data aggregation. So like, you know, I think that if you think about products like Oura Ring and Whoop and, you know, they're pretty good at, you know, and they're, they've added their own AI tools and they're pretty good.

[00:48:04] But when you start bringing all of the data and interests together, like, you know, really understanding what you Dan like to do, or maybe even adjacents, like someone like Dan likes to do this, but they also like to do this. And do you want to try that Dan? Like bringing that flavor into like other people's experiences of what they might've like, you know, splintered off into, to try something new. But I think when it comes down to the pure data side, like, you know, I, I, I started

[00:48:32] map my fitness when people used to talk about people that track data as quantified self. That was like a term that like, I went to quantified self conferences and things like that. And it was sort of seen as odd, like, wait a minute, this person tracks how long they sleep and now it's like sort of commonplace. But I think that as you think about all of that data coming together and then the friction of the things that you might do getting easier, like, you know, if, if, you know, the thing

[00:49:00] that you're supposed to do today to, you know, potentially sleep better and do this is like maybe today is about, you know, getting a massage and going cold plunging. How do I do that? Where do I go do that really quickly? I think as all that data and all that personalization starts merging together or, you know, even historically, I mean, think about, you know, I know you guys are involved with the B cycle ride locally. Discovering that ride was hard. Like it's just not well publicist, you know, not a lot of marketing around it.

[00:49:31] And all of that is going to go away. So like, you know, getting and preparing your health and wellness around things that are local to you that are easily easy to sign up for getting all of that sort of ready to go. To me, all that friction is going to go away. Like it's, it's going to be so easy to guide you around the things you're interested in and getting you to do those things and then having a great experience around that, that to me, more and more people are going to want to do that.

[00:50:00] And to me, AI is going to be the layer that interprets the data that helps people understand the adjacencies, the things, how to get better in the categories that they're in. So they want to do it longer, how to get better at golf. But, you know, you and I have golf together. So I'm like, I think all of this technology and also like even why on a specific day, I mean, you know, like take something like golf, which, you know, certainly is very, you

[00:50:28] know, I think one of the more, more difficult sports, like for, at least for me to, at least for me, but, but like, you know, even taking all that data from the day and giving you insights to like, was that because you slept poorly the night before you've had a rough week and like, or did you get injured or, or you got a million other things, you got a million other things in mind. Yeah. I mean, you need to be very focused and, you know, do it regularly, but I just think all

[00:50:57] of these things are going to become more fluid for people and that ultimately is going to result in better health and better wellness across the board. What about physical AI, like AI out there in the real world? You know, I'm not sure I could articulate this where it's actually part of the experience itself. Yeah. I mean, think about something like, I mean, look, I don't, I don't think the, like, first

[00:51:24] of all, I mean, I say this often, like my hope is that we do have more time. Um, I'm also very bullish on autonomous cars, which are largely driven by AI because they will never hit a human. So like being a cyclist on a road, my hope is I can't wait till every car is autonomous because, but think about like, think about like, so my example though, is like, think about some of the exoskeleton technology that could keep you golfing longer or, you know,

[00:51:50] uh, could improve an experience that you're happening, having, or let alone for, you know, the disabled community, allowing them to go do things like hiking and climbing and things like that. So I think the technology and the AI that's driving that experience is going to improve a whole bunch of things and allow people to do it longer. Right. Like I can imagine like, you know, being in a park or even in your yard, if you have a

[00:52:18] lot of trees and some, uh, some wind surfer type drone, you know, you schedule, it comes, comes there and you hop on it and it takes you on a, on a ride around, you know, your area just for kicks. And I think accessibility, I mean, you look at, you know, even, I mean, not that AI is built into e-bikes, but you look at something like the technology around e-bikes and the democratization of cycling. Think about how many more people are riding e-bikes now because they don't have to worry

[00:52:46] about the big hill on the way back to their house or, you know, things like that. I think technology is going to be similar. It's just going to facilitate and, and, and make the experience a little bit better. But again, I go back in the outdoors is there is nothing like being on a camping trip in Arches National Park with no technology, right? Like nothing around you. Like maybe even, even you have to use like in our case, Gaia as an offline product because you don't have cell service, right?

[00:53:14] Like there's still nothing like that experience in my mind for a human and for a group of humans to go do those things together. My real hope is that AI guides us to those things more frequently because of our health and wellness and gives us more time to be able to do those things. And more longevity. Exactly. For longer, yeah, longer. All right. So let's come back to some other things. There was a comment made today and we were speaking in front of the Boulder Startup Week

[00:53:40] crowd and I asked the question and I wanted people to answer one or the other, not both, which was, are you more fearful of AI? Are you more excited about it? And, and someone stepped up and said, how about if I change that? And he said, what if we're sad about AI? What was your reaction when you heard him use the word sad about AI?

[00:54:03] Well, I think for, um, again, I, I, there, there is a part of me that if you like the mental challenge and the collaborative environments that, you know, many products and businesses have been built around, like, you know, let's even take the example that I was giving about like, okay, so I write this product spec specification before I build this product.

[00:54:30] I have agents that review the specification that historically all would have been like almost like a group of people in a room collaborating, right? Like, you know, really debating about the feature set and, you know, potentially doing some, you know, going out. Like we used to do these things where you'd go out, you'd draw the wireframes and you'd literally go out on the street and you'd ask the person like, well, what do you think about this app? And it wasn't even like an app.

[00:54:56] It was a piece of paper with like buttons on it, you know, and that whole process, I think the sadness comes from a little bit of like the community and sort of engagement feel that those projects brought. And now it's like, okay, I can basically do all of that in an hour and have all that feedback and then already be building the product myself. Um, and so I think the sadness comes a little bit from like, or is, is it going to diminish the community experience that was like brought together by some of these people?

[00:55:27] And he was specifically talking about a creative process, like whether that be in around building a film or, you know, a TV series and, you know, the impact that it's already had on some of the creative world. Um, so I certainly understand it. Like I, I don't, I don't dismiss it at all that like, well, you know, we just get on board and like, you know, come along. Um, but I also like, again, I, I, I, I fear that technology really is free.

[00:55:56] I am certain that technology does not slow down. No. Right. So it's not like, you know, and I don't know, there's this other great strategy of like, this is something that in the media business is a common term, which is like nostalgia isn't a strategy. Like as much as I love, I mean, I was a 35 year subscriber of VeloNews. We don't have VeloNews anymore. Right. Because it had dwindled from 120 or 30,000 subscribers to 15 and it was costing the business

[00:56:25] a million dollars a year in expense. Right. So nostalgia, if like, if I was just like, oh no, Dan, you're an investor and I don't care whether or not this thing loses money. Like that's not a strategy. Right. And there, I mean, a lot of people, uh, aren't comfortable with change. They want, they want stability. They don't want things to be different from one day to the next. You know, maybe they have, you know, anxiety.

[00:56:52] Um, and you know, that's been around for a long time. It will continue to be around, but with. All new technology changes, technology introductions, change happens and AI, it's changing way quicker and way more profoundly. So if, if the grouping of people who are not comfortable with change, I mean, this has got

[00:57:14] to be a, a tsunami of, of stress and anxiety in their lives with no end in sight. And, and I don't know what the answer to that is for them. Yeah. I, I, I, yeah, I think. I think it's, it is going like, I do think this is probably the most disruptive. I, I, I think robotics is going to be way more disruptive than people think. Like if you already look, go to like an Amazon factory and look at what's happened there.

[00:57:42] Like AI is AI, but it's both robotics is a derivative of AI at this point. A hundred percent. But I think these are some of the most disruptive, like people want to compare it to the industrial revolution. I think this is more disruptive. I think this is, I think this is bigger and at a scale that impacts humans that we don't really understand yet. And I think that's what I was saying. Like the last question was like, well, you know, what do you think is going to happen?

[00:58:07] And I'm like, certainly whatever I predict is likely not what it's going to look like. You know, this is different. I mean, it really is. And I get it. Every time there was a big technology change. Oh my God. It's TVs. I mean, I've got room and iPhones and cloud internet. And, but this is fundamentally different because the ultimate power of what AI itself. Now we knew the internet was going to be really powerful, but there was never like the internet's

[00:58:35] going to take humans over. I mean, that, that was never part of the conversation. Never was, you know, it would have been. Didn't last too long. That's one thing it's not going to do. It might, it might change a lot of things, but it's not going to take over kind of what we think of as humans, but I think in two ways, AI is a very real added dimension.

[00:59:00] One is it may become more powerful than humans when, and what that really means is unclear. So that's one. And secondly, when you combine AI with, uh, genomics, you could result in changing humans fundamentally that humans, uh, a next generation of humans might be post humans.

[00:59:26] They might be, uh, have their gene pools, uh, you know, manipulated so that, you know, those with money, um, might be able to invest in their kids being taller or their kids being faster or their kids being smarter or them having this characteristic or that characteristic. And, and, you know, all bets are off when that starts to happen. And it will start to happen probably sooner and later, probably already has in small pockets here and there.

[00:59:55] And so you've got the dimension of, you've got this, you know, the set of AI that might grow in intelligence that starts to compete with humans combined with, uh, post humans, uh, you know, being designed, I wouldn't even say evolving, but being designed to be something different than someone who's like a pure human. And how does society react in response to those? I don't know. Yeah.

[01:00:21] I mean, as you know, I ran a consumer genetics company before I started outside and that was a little bit of a tangent for me after I left Under Armour. Um, but yeah, I, I, there's a, you know, I think the speed at which the AI is, you know, developing and the knowledge base and what it potentially means for, you know, everything

[01:00:45] from pharmaceutical development to, you know, robotic development, all of this is like, it is almost mind boggling. Like you can go down a lot of rabbit holes very, very quickly. Um, I, the truth is right now, I don't know what it means. My, in some ways I do hope, and I believe it probably will take longer than people think like, it's kind of like, I remember Elon once saying like, he thought all cars would be autonomous by 2030.

[01:01:14] We're a long way from all cars being autonomous by 2030. There's just too many. Yeah. There's like too many cars on the road. Right. Um, so I, I just, in some ways I hope that we as humans have more time to adapt and that we, again, I go back to that the people that have the ability to think about how to leverage human resource alongside of the AI do it in a very constructive way rather than a destructive way.

[01:01:41] Um, which is, you know, it's challenging when you're talking about profit and capitalism and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know it until he was here last night, but the head of security of cyber or, uh, Anthropic was here. Oh, interesting. He was part of, we had a, for Boulder startup week. No, we had a, for Colorado, Colorado thrives and Endeavor was involved with it.

[01:02:06] We had a, a 14 person dinner, all kind of, uh, cutting edge AI with a single topic. And that is, uh, how does Colorado harness AI, you know, for the betterment of, of, uh, our broader workforce, you know, our people who are otherwise at risk of being displaced or being underemployed. So it was kind of an open conversation for people to explore that.

[01:02:33] And, you know, as you know, I know most of the tech crowd around here, there were at least four people who were at the dinner last night that I hadn't met before in Boulder who are, you know, one of them has, I think he said 3000 people working for him cause he's CEO of, uh, Workday and he's here in Boulder. Oh wow. I didn't realize he was here in Boulder. Yeah. Just right off of downtown. Wow. So really dynamic. I, and we're going to build more of a relationship there as well, but it was interesting to see, you know, Brian Leach was here.

[01:03:01] There were a number of really interesting, you know, I always mix up or mispronounce Josh's name. Gwyneth? Gwyther. Gwyther. Gwyther. Is that how you pronounce this? So Josh Gwyther was part of it and, and Katie Stanton's partner, uh, was part of it. So we had a really interesting collection of, of, you know, native AI just having this free-flowing conversation. Yeah. It's pretty fascinating. I mean, there's gonna, there needs to be a lot of them. I mean, I think that's the great part is like those types of dinners.

[01:03:30] I just think that's, that is the right type of conversation to be having about the progression and how it's happening and how we potentially do it responsibly. Yeah. And, and this, I may be overreacting to this, uh, suggestion that popped up during the discussion, uh, where, uh, because we spent the last half hour saying, okay, if we were going to bring three or four recommendations forward, what would they be?

[01:03:58] And that was in the context of, you know, Colorado Thrives, the head of that was, you know, was kind of co-hosting the dinner. And if she wants to bring that back to Colorado Thrives, uh, what would she bring back? And one thing we talked a lot about was, um, a marketing campaign and usually personal marketing campaign. Now we got to do real stuff. Uh, but as we fleshed it out more, what it meant was, uh, how do we get all of Colorado behind, uh, AI?

[01:04:27] And I don't mean AI in the context of those are developers and the whole setback we have. Everyone. Yeah. And, you know, I use the analogy once we were having that discussion of, you know, Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan's wife, you know, sort of the, uh, drugs were a big deal back then. It was, you know, causing a lot of disruption and they came up with the just say no campaign. And so perhaps what we need is something like, uh, you know, uh, the opposite of that, uh, for Colorado. Colorado says yes to AI.

[01:04:57] Yeah. So Colorado says yes to AI. And, and what does that mean? It means a whole bunch of things. It means when it comes to, you know, school, you know, preschool and above, we're all about AI. We're going to be helping our, you know, our kids learn AI native. You know, we are all over that. It means, uh, it means, uh, with our workforce, how do we make sure, uh, you know, AI is kind of, uh, promoted and encouraged throughout all aspects.

[01:05:27] With our political, uh, leaders that they are real pro-AID. It doesn't mean- Should there be incentives? Should there be all these things, right? Exactly. So can we just make Colorado the state that is most proactive about AI for everyone? Uh, can there be something thematic around that? And, and that becomes the scaffolding to build out kind of specific programs. You know, everyone should have, you know, we talk a lot about the digital divide.

[01:05:54] Well, the AI divide is if, uh, if those with less access to resources means they only get free AI that is not as powerful. You can't do as much stuff with. Yeah. Will that be a big disadvantage? I would think so. Can you provide kind of more equal access to AI for kids growing up? Everyone. Yeah. Everyone in every demographic for sure. I mean, you know, you don't want there to be a delineation between private school attendees and public school attendees and things like that.

[01:06:23] Uh, but, uh, any closing thoughts? Uh, uh, well, I certainly look forward to seeing it outside days. Yes. I got a hotel room. Cindy's going to be with me. We're going to be exploiting that long weekend. Um, I, and I hope the audience will join us there too. It's a great, great four or five days just spending time in the outdoors and really enjoying everything that Colorado has to offer. Yeah. For certain. Yeah. Well, thank you much. It's a lot of fun and thank you for everything you're doing for the community and, and for being a close friend as well. So I really appreciate that. Thanks for having me. All right.

[01:06:53] Thanks. Yep. Thank you for listening to this episode of the bear roars. Check out stretch the new song from Dan Caruso with music by Jason Mendelsohn available now on all streaming services. If you enjoyed the episode, please like, and subscribe on your listening platform. This podcast was produced by loud bear productions and edited by Natanya Chatfield with support from Kendall Weinberg, Gibson Seagert, and Alex Kim.