Snipd DJ, San Francisco User-Meetup, and Podcaster Eric Jorgenson  🔗 **Source:** [Snipd DJ, San Francisco User-Meetup, and Podcaster Eric Jorgenson](https://share.snipd.com/episode/7c7fcfae-27fe-44b8-a3f8-f8e584011ed4) ## Highlights - **Snipd Team Baby News And SF Meetup** - Kevin Smith shared that both he and colleague Min recently had babies, so the Snipd team is now "up by two babies." - He then invited nearby users to a downtown San Francisco meetup with drinks, pizza, podcast talk, and possibly Swyx from Latent Space. Transcript: Kevin Smith No, well, actually, before we dive in, I have some personal news I wanted to share. My wife and I recently had a baby. We're super happy. Everyone's healthy. But of course, we're also a bit more tired. And on top of that, my colleague Min also had a baby. So there, everyone is happy. Everyone's healthy and tired. But yeah, I just wanted to share this news with you. The Snip team has grown by two babies. Okay, so let's dive in with the actual update. First up, you know what? Let's actually start with a user meetup in San Francisco, just because it's a quick one. So I'm in San Francisco at the moment, including my wife and baby, by the way. I thought I have to mention that, not that you think I left them at home all alone. So if you are in San Francisco or close by, you want to have a chat with me or a conversation with other SNP users, or you know what, just have a drink, have some pizza, talk, podcast, AI, Whatever's on your mind, please do sign up for our in-person meetup in San Francisco. There's a link in the show notes where you can sign up. We will most probably do it next week in downtown San Francisco. Exact time is still open. And we might even have a special guest, Swix, the podcast host of the popular AI engineering podcast, Latent Space. And he's also the creator of the AI News newsletter. He will most probably join us as well. He's also a Snipped user and a very interesting guy to chat with. So yet another reason to join. Sign up via the link in the show notes. ([Time 0:01:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a53e6fa3-006c-4286-bb9e-74732c1b0484)) - **Why DJ Beats Audio Summaries For Podcast Discovery** - Kevin Smith argues AI summaries help review key takeaways but cannot replace hearing the actual voices and personalities inside podcasts. - Snipd DJ instead jumps to the most insightful moments in an episode, helping users finish episodes about four times faster. Transcript: Kevin Smith Okay, second up, the new DJ feature. So this is the main reason why I recorded this announcement podcast or update. It's more of an update than an announcement because the first version is already live. I hope you've given it a try in the meantime. If you haven't, please do so today. Maybe even use it on this episode. So I wanted to share a bit more background about this feature and our ideas for the future. So the motivation for this feature really came from the desire to consume more content than I currently have time for. There's just so much good content out there and my queue is overflowing. The obvious thought here when I talk to people about this is, of course, well, don't you already have AI summaries in the app or you could create audio versions again of the AI summaries? But as you all know, summaries can never replace listening to the actual voices, the actual characters inside the podcast that you get to know. So I see summaries as great for getting an overview of the key takeaways that I will learn and also afterwards reviewing it again and saving them as snips. They're incredible. I think they're very valuable and they add, it's a net positive to the experience, but they cannot replicate the joy of listening to the actual content. So what the DJ does for you is it finds the most insightful moments inside a podcast episode and then takes over control of your player to jump directly to those moments inside the episode. This lets you get through an episode four times faster, or the way that I like to see it is, it lets me listen to four times as many podcasts. Now, of course, I'm not suggesting to listen to all podcast episodes with the DJ. Not at all. I will continue to listen to long-form episodes that I'm excited about. But for those episodes that in the past have disappeared in my queue backlog, never to be seen again, they now get listened to with the DJ feature, which is incredibly. I'm basically listening to more episodes now. And I've heard similar feedback from some of you who have told me they now hit play on so many more episodes than in the past they would have skipped or they know they would have ended up In the queue backlog graveyard. One user told me he never listened to episodes longer than one hour in the past. They were just too daunting to him. And now he listens to them regularly with a DJ. Another user told me that whenever he's not 100% convinced about an episode, he first listens to it with a DJ. And if he likes it, he goes back and listens to the full episode. So in general, the feedback so far has been incredible. Thanks, and a big thanks to everyone who has reached out and told us what they like and also what they don't like, especially also what you like to see improve. This has been really helpful. And yeah, given this feedback, we're really motivated on developing this further. ([Time 0:03:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9badec80-19f7-4914-87e7-fb7114caa241)) - **The Personal Librarian Version Of Snipd DJ** - Kevin Smith described an internal DJ prototype that scans all subscribed shows and selects moments based on user-defined goals and preferences. - He told it he is a new parent and wants one parenting-related highlight each week, framing DJ as a user-controlled personal librarian. Transcript: Kevin Smith So this brings me to what are our ideas for the future with this feature. We actually already internally have a prototype of the DJ where instead of just going through a single episode, it actually goes through all episodes in your subscriptions and finds The moments that are most relevant for you or you can actually prompt it what exactly you want. So this is maybe the most important part of this prototype. You are able to tell the DJ yourself which moments it should select and why. So you can give the DJ more information about yourself. What is your background? Who are you? What are your goals that you want to achieve? What is content you like? What is content you don't like. So as an example, I told the DJ in our internal prototype that I'm a parent now, and I'd love to get one parenting-related highlight each week that it then goes out and finds for me. So yeah, this DJ 2.0 can either go through the recent episodes in your subscriptions, or it can find the best moments of an entire show. So it's much more general than what we have live right now. Yeah, with this, we basically were working towards a future where the DJ becomes your personal librarian. I sort of like this term. It was actually one of our users who used that term describing the feature back to me. So it's your personal librarian that is controlled by you. So it's not controlled by us. It doesn't work for us, the platform, but it works for you. And this personal librarian goes out into the vast universe of audio content, listens to everything just to find the exact content that fits your goals, your interests. So in a way, another way to look at it is it's an algorithm that you can talk to. And again, it works for you, not for us. I actually believe this is a general shift in media platforms that is starting to happen now, where the algorithms of the past 15 years, they were all machine learning models trained To optimize some crude metric like clicks, time on site, or app dollars. And now, thanks to AI, we are entering this new era in which we humans, we can talk to machines and we can actually tell them exactly what we want them to do and what not to do. And I find this idea so powerful. For me, it's sort of the next level of personalization, especially for people like me and you, people who want to be productive, who value their time, who want to be mindful about what They consume. And they have some clear opinions and systems that they want to set up. So, yeah, we're still very early and I could talk about this topic for an hour easily. There's so many different aspects that flow into this and things that I believe are happening on the technological side that are now enabling some of these features and developments. But I do want to keep these announcement podcasts short, so I'll keep it at that. But if you are a podcast out there and would like to talk to me more in-depth about this topic on your show, feel free to reach out. I'm happy to do that. Okay. Now, this internal prototype that I mentioned, we will soon release this to some first select test users, but we don't have an exact date yet. I will let you know when that happens. Yeah, should be in the next one to two weeks. ([Time 0:06:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/42d24fcd-0a60-4ed8-b4a1-da23498a6527)) - **Podcasting Works Because It Gives You Smart Friends** - Eric Jorgenson says podcasting gives anyone access to "smart friends" by creating meaningful one-way relationships with exceptional minds. - He chose Smart Friends instead of naming the show after himself because that friendship is the medium's core value. Transcript: Kevin Smith This is actually a new segment in the announcement podcast. You are the very first one I'm doing this segment with. The idea is to showcase some incredible podcasts that are out there that I believe SNP users should know about. And you have such a podcast. It is called Smart Friends. And can you tell me and our fellow Sniffed users more about it? Like what is your podcast about and who should listen to it? Eric Jorgenson Yeah, it's a little bit of, I would say it's analogous to the Joe Rogan where it's like my combination of personal interests, which ends up being a combination of authors whose books I like and work on. It's companies I invest in, or it's just people who I think are uniquely underrated and very smart. So I don't really play the game of like trying to host book tours or get big names or anything like that. But you will hear conversations between literally me and my real life friends who I think have amazing ideas, startups that I think could change the world at the very earliest stages. And it's just a casual, fun show. And I have a great time doing it. And, uh, you know, quite a few of the people that have come on and over the years have gone on to be, you know, incredibly successful either in their podcasts, like David Sendra and Chris Williamson, or, um, in building their businesses like Matt Lozak and Shane Mack. So I think I've got a pretty decent nose for finding interesting things early and trying to bring them to you in a fun and easy way. Kevin Smith One thing I always have to think about, one quote when I hear the title of your show, Smart Friends, it's always, you are the average of your five closest friends. And, and, and for me, it's always like the, then my reaction is like, wait, wait, wait, what about, what about my podcast friends? Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's, I listened to so many podcasts and I sort of have this weird relationship with the people that I listened to. I, I learned from them and it's almost like I have a relationship with them. So I always think like this, this quote needs to be extended. And your podcast is a very good example of that. Eric Jorgenson This is why I chose the name Smart Friends. I don't want it to be it's not the Eric Jorgensen show. It's Eric Jorgensen has smart friends. And I think that like, just the value proposition of podcasting as an industry two words is smart friends. No matter who you are, where you are, when you are, like you can access the brightest minds in the world and in history as we are recording them and gain this sort of personal. It's asymmetric, but it is a really deep and thorough and meaningful friendship with some of the smartest people alive at basically zero cost. And that is a fucking miracle. And I think, you know, what better name for a podcast than, you know, the secret magic of podcasting itself. ([Time 0:11:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/99a6b36e-03e1-4655-bff6-ed31d6349b63)) - **The Book Of Elon Tries To Create More Elons** - Eric Jorgenson wrote The Book of Elon to explain the mindset and mental toolkit behind Elon Musk's extreme productivity and ambition. - He frames the mission as creating "1 million Musks" by spreading ideas that could change people's life trajectories early. Transcript: Kevin Smith And yeah, you also just released a new book called The Book of Elon. I don't know whether it's also one of your smart friends, but it sounds incredible. Well, I've actually been already listening to the book. I'm now halfway through and absolutely love it. You also even published it on your podcast, Smart Friends for Free, which is incredibly generous and unbelievably valuable for all of the people who can't afford the book. For those of you listening who can't afford the book, please go out there and, of course, buy it from it's on Amazon, it's on Audible. But yeah, Eric, why did you write this new book? And why should someone like me listen to it or read it? Eric Jorgenson Yeah, I think it's, it is becoming a very obvious thing that Elon Musk is an outlier among outliers. And, you know, the most iconic entrepreneur of our generation, and maybe the greatest of all time. And every the question on sort of so many people's minds who are founders or business people is like, how does he do it? What is he doing differently? How does he think? What's the mindset? You know, obviously he's above average intelligence and he works very hard, but that doesn't explain, you know, why he's a thousand times more productive and seems to consistently Do things that other people think are actually physically impossible. And so what is the mindset? What is the mental toolkit? What does he know that, that we don't and what can we learn from him? And that my books are really, you know, in, in the same ethos as the podcast, which is like, I want to create a feeling like you're sitting across the table from Elon Musk and he's personally Mentoring you and teaching you all the most timeless and valuable things that he's learned. It's not, I don't write biographies. I don't, um, I don't write narratives about how the companies come. I create something that feels like an intimate dialogue between you and this person. And that's what I did for the Almanac of Naval, which has gone on to sell nearly 2 million copies. And I've given away probably 5 million more digital versions in the same way that we're doing with, with the book of Elon, because I, I believe these ideas can change your life and that They are applicable to every human on earth. And it's, you know, as widespread as books are, you still can't actually get a book everywhere on earth in all the languages as quickly as you might be able to, you might want to. And so I get messages every day from people who either can't afford or aren't in this sort of geographic location where books are easily accessible immediately. And they say, you know, I downloaded your book, I read it, changed my life. Like, I appreciate it. I shared it. I reviewed it, whatever. And so I find it like both personally rewarding and just, I think it's good for the future to install good ideas into as many minds as we possibly can. Kevin Smith Yeah, I really loved in, I think it was in the foreword by Naval, where he was saying something along the lines of, if this book helps in getting us a couple of more Elons in the future, like Just imagine the value created for society. Eric Jorgenson Yeah, that's my mission. My mission statement for this book is 1 million musks. And so, you know, that takes a lot of forms. And of course, everyone's going to be their own authentic selves. But, you know, imagine where our species will be if in 100 years we have, you know, 100, 1000 or a million people operating at an engineering and entrepreneurial level that Elon Musk Is. And there's no reason we can't. That's just purely an education problem. Just how many people can we get exposed to the right ideas early enough in life that they can change their trajectory and tackle big problems and do it effectively and get them the right Resources. And we can see this sort of leaps in prosperity continue. This is a really exciting time to be alive. ([Time 0:14:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/00d4c725-2522-4637-8cde-31f48bf87cb7)) - **Why Installing Better Ideas Shapes Civilization** - Eric Jorgenson believes civilization's progress depends upstream on the quality of ideas installed in people's heads. - He contrasts bad ideas that produce zero-sum violence with wise cooperative ideas that enable peace, food, air conditioning, and progress. Transcript: Kevin Smith I mean, I can also like you describing this, it really shows what what drives you like why are you doing all of this because you are correct me if i'm wrong you're a full-time ceo you're An author you're doing your show and then you still you're also even a father you have a young baby so i mean there has to be something driving you to doing all of this so so like who is, who Is the person behind all of this? Who is Eric? Eric Jorgenson Yeah, I mean, I was, I was lucky to have sort of picked the right heroes early in life. I think Charlie Munger may be chief among them and he's got a great line. That's a few of them that sort of stack on each other. So one is it's a moral obligation to acquire wisdom. I really liked that one. The other is the best thing a human being can do is to help another human to know more. And, you know, even though Warren and Charlie are both mainly investors, they also say like they want their legacy to be that they were known as teachers and shared what they learned, You know, as openly and honestly as they possibly could through their lives. I think, you know, the more rigorous scientific version of this is, you know, David Deutsch's work around the creation of knowledge and epistemology and things like that. And so, you know, my straightforward plain English way of saying it really is, you want to install good ideas into people's heads. And when we have bad ideas in our heads we are you know cavemen pursuing a zero-sum sort of violent civilization that results in pain and starvation and when we are all collectively sort Of wise enlightened caring and cooperative we have air conditioning and peace and food and progress. And the difference between one and the other is literally just the quality of the ideas in the heads. And it's kind of weird to say that. Like, you know, I think a lot of people look at either podcasting or content creation or social media or even writing books as like this kind of a Just like a non-concrete thing that, you Know, like a real day's work is working in an auto factory. And on the one hand, that's true. Like we, atoms are important and infrastructure is important and all those things matter. But the quality of the ideas in the head of people is upstream of almost everything. And so it really matters to go to work on that and treat that as a great responsibility. And I don't think a lot of the companies and people who make a living installing ideas take that particularly seriously, right? Like, you know, the algorithms and the media companies, I feel like they've lost a lot of trust in people. And so, you know, we're trying to stick our finger in that dab. Nice, nice. Kevin Smith And yeah, I mean, I completely agree that podcast is one of the mediums where the, let's call it society of ideas have flourished quite a lot with shows like yours and many others. I don't want to be plugging Snipt to Snipt users, but I mean, that's the reason why we built Snipt, right? Because we've always seen podcasts as one of the largest knowledge bases out there with so many incredible ideas and access to these incredible smart friends. Eric Jorgenson I, you know, the, the, my whole career has been sort of curation and sharing. And that is sort of at the essence of Snip. You know, you can spend so much time online and not actually like accrue anything and not actually compound knowledge or not actually filter the signal from the noise. And, you know, it has been a huge change in the amount of compounding benefit that's come from my listening time. When I have an app like Snips. It has been, I've been listening to podcasts since, since there were podcasts. Um, and I've always believed that it's a really important medium, but I do think, you know, the act of collecting those insights and, and using them and curating them and revisiting Them is deeply important for actually fully installing those ideas into your head until they become behaviors. Nice. ([Time 0:18:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fa279b4a-020e-4c1d-80df-ec6cb376840b)) - **Elon Musk's Edge Comes From Purpose Not Wealth** - Eric Jorgenson says Elon Musk's biggest lesson is that people are capable of far more than they think. - He argues Elon's outlier results come from a long-term purpose to help humanity, not a direct pursuit of wealth. Transcript: Kevin Smith On your show, you've interviewed many, many smart friends. You've written all of these books about smart people. What is one, if you just had to share one insight or idea that you keep coming back to, like what, what would that be? Eric Jorgenson For the Elon book, I think the biggest meta lessons are one that you are capable of more than you think. That is, that is sort of the most generalizable and timeless lesson for Elon, I think. The other is that he works, he has a really profound sense of purpose that comes from a worldview around sort of the creating progress for humanity and preserving consciousness and Doing the most good for the most number of people over a very long time horizon. And it's actually, you know, I think it'll be familiar to the sci-fi readers, but it's actually quite rare when you look around and see how many of our sort of world leaders, you know, Political, entrepreneurial, spiritual, whatever, think this way. And I think that's why Elon has created such a following and such a, had such a resonance with people and has such diehard fans is because he's really faced these crossroads and taken Massive personal risks financially and and with his reputation over and over and over again in his career to do the most good for the broadest number of people and of course people can Disagree about you know his specific vision of that but it's when you actually you sort of take the whole thing and that's what i tried to do in this book in a very concise way is just like Understand his worldview a little bit understand his motivations understand how he sees things and the purposes that come from that you know that drive spacex and tesla and i think There's a paradox where being driven by a purpose like that, that comes from this philosophy and this worldview actually creates, or is one of the things that creates these incredible Outlier companies and creates what essentially turned him into the wealthiest person on earth. It's not a naked pursuit of wealth. It's not trying to become rich. It's trying to achieve the impossible and define the odds and succeeding at it. ([Time 0:22:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6782b3e9-761b-4976-81db-c3e121b33e15)) - **Wealth And Status Follow Indirectly From Mission** - Kevin Smith connects Eric Jorgenson's point back to Naval's idea that wealth is usually gained indirectly while pursuing something more meaningful. - Eric adds that directly chasing status or wealth is lower status than serving a bigger mission and letting success follow. Transcript: Kevin Smith Well, that final thought reminds me of one of the insights that I think Naval sometimes talks about, how these things like wealth, the way to achieve them is actually not to try to achieve Them directly, but it actually is something that happens indirectly on your pursuit of something more valuable often. Yeah. Eric Jorgenson Yeah. There's, there's nothing, there's nothing lower status than directly pursuing status, right? There's nothing more. Yeah. The same with wealth. And yeah, we, we, I think we talked about that. The other thing I was going to say is, you know, there's a one weird trick of, if you want to have somebody really, you know, impressive on your podcast, write a book about him. And, you know, I wrote a book about Naval in 2020. And he, you know, I got to actually record an interview with him four or five years later for to update the book. And that's that's published on the Smart Friends podcast as well. But it's like a three or four hour conversation where we got to really go deep and update everything for the book, which was one of the coolest days that I've had. Kevin Smith I can imagine. And this is actually a great, great moment to wrap it up. And because I always want to end these segments with one of the episodes to have as a starting point as my personal recommendation. And so for anyone listening, if any of this sounded interesting, check out the Smart Friends podcast. I will, of course, link it in the show notes. And if you want to have a first episode to start listening to, I really recommend this Naval episode that Eric was just referring to. I'll also link to it below. I also listen to it. It's incredible. Eric, where can people reach out to you? ([Time 0:24:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8668cd3f-c628-49be-9e8d-0527dbccc49a))