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\[01:02:03.11\] So I've come to the grips with the fact that it's probably how it's always going to be for me. And so my next thing I want to do is I want to build something that has an enormous cash flow, but is like, we never take VC, and it's just me and somebody else. And I think I'll actually be satisfied with tha... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. I've always known you as a -- I would kind of classify you as an inventor, in a way... Not like a literal like you made something, but you've definitely -- like, Pictos was not something, and then creating icon libraries became a thing... The way you engineered to deliver that initially... I m... |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah. And I've always been disappointed in myself for not having the ability to -- I could think larger, I could think of things that I want to do that would be big, but I just don't have the ability to do it. And I've always -- practically, it's broken down to the fact that I don't have the network to... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Network is required. You're right. I mean, you can't just have the skills and the ability and the drive. You have to have the other people \[unintelligible 01:04:20.04\] Like the CFO with the license, for example, so you don't have to go and do that yourself. |
**Drew Wilson:** Exactly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Cram for a week, \[unintelligible 01:04:27.02\] |
**Drew Wilson:** Andrew Carroll, man. He's a good guy, if you know him. Yeah. One of my big stretches, though, in that I want to be a part of something very large is this thing called Cortical Labs. I don't know if you've seen that. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** No. |
**Drew Wilson:** I just launched the new site there. So I'm on the team there as well, doing design... So it's corticallabs.com. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** How do you spell that? |
**Drew Wilson:** corticallabs.com. And so what we've built is the very first commercially-available biological computer. An actual human brain inside of a computer, and that is the CPU. That is the only CPU. It's pretty rad. We could take a prick of your blood, or sample of your skin, regress that down to a stem cell, ... |
\[01:06:05.20\] And the thing that we've built is the thing that translates your code into electrical impulses to the neurons. Also the computer, the CL1, has a bunch of hoses in it to feed the brain essentially electrolytes. Because brains make their own electricity through a chemical process where they break down ele... |
The idea is that instead of artificial intelligence's actual intelligence, and where artificial intelligence is trying to get to - they're trying to get to AGI, so then you can prompt it and it can think like a human... That thing starts at a human, and it's already there, and it already thinks like a human. So it's a ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, now I'm angry with you, because you just dropped this massive conversation here in front of us... It was not part of my plan, Drew... |
**Drew Wilson:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** This was not part of my plan. You cannot ruin an interviewer's plan. |
**Drew Wilson:** Brains...! |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'm just kidding with you. This is wild. And so what role do you play for Cortical? |
**Drew Wilson:** So I'm the designer there. And I saw a video on Twitter by Robert Scoble a year and a half or more ago, where he interviewed Hon, who is the CEO at Cortical, and the founder... And he was up in Hon's hotel room. Hon was there for like a trade show of sorts... And Robert met up with him, and like filmed... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:09:50.18\] Brains in the cloud. I love it. Okay. So let me zoom out then... Who was this person again at GoDaddy that pulled you aside and was like "I was on the YC website..." Who is this person here? I kind of felt like that person in this moment here. Who was that person again? Was he your m... |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah, he was my manager. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Your manager. So here you are at Clerk - and I know Clerk, because they've sponsored our show before... I met the CEO, great team there... Super-cool, the way they do auth. I mean, very focused on Next, and the frontend kind of things for when it comes to authorization and this whole entire UI kit..... |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah. So at clerk, I'm actually on the leadership team there, and I am the head of design. So I've got a team of like - I think there's 12 of us now designers. And then I'm also the head of commerce and billing, which is our new product, which has a very large team right now, as we're prepping for laun... |
The reason I can work on Cortical and Clerk at the same time - Cortical's designs needs are vastly less than what Clerk needs. And there's not a team, essentially, that I have there. It's just me. So it's way easier to manage. Also, it's not like a paid job. I mean, I have equity, but it's not a paid job where I'm maki... |
There's just so many cool things that can come about. And then as a drug manufacturer, you're like "How do I test this in people?" Well, you can't; you have to get all these approvals. You have to first do mice, then monkeys, and this, and that, and it takes a freaking decade by the time you get to people. So with this... |
And then Clerk, separately, is a freaking awesome company. The thing I like about Clerk is that if I were to run a company, it would be very similar to how Clerk runs. So I feel very at home at that company, which is really cool. And they're like a step or two beyond what I was able to get to with my companies. |
\[01:14:10.00\] Clerk is essentially Plasso, my old company, 2.0. It's the exact same thing. Embeddable auth, embeddable billing... That's exactly what Plasso did back in 2014. And Clerk is the same thing, just the React way, right? The newer style. So it's cool in some ways. I have a lot of experience with that stuff,... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What made you -- this might show some of your cards a little bit, but hearing your story, I suppose, in this conversation, and then being aware of what you've been doing for the last decade, let's just say, to me, I wouldn't think that you would need a job. Or that you would just have enough wealth,... |
**Drew Wilson:** You would be wrong, Adam... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Am I way wrong? |
**Drew Wilson:** You would be wrong, Adam. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, my gosh. Sadness. |
**Drew Wilson:** No, it's not sadness. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's not sadness. |
**Drew Wilson:** It's great. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, let me rephrase that. It's sadness that I was wrong. It's not sadness that that's true. |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah, yeah. I invested a lot of money smartly, and I used a lot of that money for Letter. So I made -- like, in the span between 2018 and 2022 or 2023, before the market crashed, I made a lot of money, and I built this huge office, and addition, and movie theater, and all this kind of stuff in my house... |
Obviously, ideally, I didn't want to have to get a job. But the play with Letter didn't work out, and so I did have to, and so that's where I'm at. But what's cool is the investors who invested in Letter were all like "We've never seen anybody do this, so this is really cool that you're doing this, taking on this risk.... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, exactly. Interesting. |
**Drew Wilson:** You win some, you lose some, man... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You do win some, you lose some, and I've always -- |
**Drew Wilson:** I'm way better off than when I started though, so it's not like I took any steps backwards. It's definitely -- it was a hundred steps forward and some steps backwards. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, don't let this seem like I'm judging your -- this is not a report card for drew, okay? |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** This is not me examining your English, and your social studies, and your gym - because gym is always a class, too. I'm not examining those things and saying "Okay, great. You've passed the sixth grade. You can go to junior high", kind of thing. That's not what we're doing here. |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:17:43.24\] But I think we're peeling back the layers a little bit to just understand the reasons for the move. So it sounds like you've got some equity in Cortical. The CL1 sounds super-dope. I mean, I'm not even talking about it. Not because I'm not interested, because I just know it'll take o... |
**Drew Wilson:** Yeah, I would suggest if you're listening, go check out valiocon.com, sign up, come out, hang out... It's going to be a good time. I've got a lot of cool speakers that're going to be there. A couple that I'm just waiting on the final -- not actual signature, but final go ahead, and then they'll be up o... |
One of the other focuses of ValioCon is giving people who don't normally speak at conferences a chance to speak at a conference. And if they're doing something really cool, I want to feature them. I want them to have a platform to talk about what they're doing. So that's also another focus on ValioCon, is getting folks... |
What's new in Clerk is we are right on the cusp... I mean, maybe when this thing -- I'm not sure when this episode will go out, but maybe when this episode will go out, Clerk Billing will have launched. |
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