 Yeah Hey girls, hello. Hello. How are you feeling today? Wonderful. Yeah, I've just lagged but alive slushy I forgot my hat. So I'll have to compensate with this crazy dress Good. Well, thank you so much for Being here. I'm excited to be chatting about the future of creativity online. So maybe we just start with some introductions Pippa, do you want to just Tell us who you are and maybe as a little prompt we could all share what creativity means to us personally sure and Thanks everyone for being here. So my day job is I'm a partner at Sweet Capital and I think it's probably helpful if I give a bit of context as to why I'm so excited about the future of creativity So I grew up as a crazy design nerd I was that kid using Corel draw 3.0 to design vector graphic stickers to sell to my friends I was using all the Adobe products to design overly complex PSD files for homework projects And when I was at Oxford, I felt like I was the only kid that really cared about being illustrator and a graphic designer He used to run like workshops for for how to use in design and illustrator and Photoshop. So My DNA is also in gaming consumer So I've long before the proverbial metaverse became a thing I was looking at virtual worlds and sort of the roles of digital fashion and what identity means and I think it you know If we be a bit cheesy I've gone from paintbrushes and pencils all the way through to pixels and now machine like large Language models which doesn't really fit into the alliteration, but at every sort of evolution I've been so inspired by the role that technology has played in augmenting human creativity and Really excited to get into some of that today. Yeah, perfect. Sayon Hi, I'm Saiyan Banister. I'm a venture capitalist with long journey ventures, which is a firm that I started with my partners prior to that I was at Founders Fund for four years. I'm also an entrepreneur and I've invested in over a couple hundred different companies and I don't like talking about myself I'll stop there What does creativity mean to you personally? What does creativity mean to me? Well, I think you know, I think If you have an idea and you bring it into reality So, you know, how do you do that? How do you take a disparate concept and make it real? And so that's how I would define it. I think what do you think? Yeah, I mean for me it's the ability to take an idea from the imagination and apply some sort of Magic paintbrush, which I think amazingly through things like AI now anyone with an imagination has the ability to be a conceptual artist And it can be whatever you want it to be. Yeah. Yeah I'll just quickly introduce myself as well. So my name is Ida Josephina. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Spain We're building an integrated web for ideas and we'll touch on topics related to I think a lot of our mutual interest today But creativity to me I think means this constant sort of synergy or tango between like a two-sided coin One side is sort of this. I don't know what you consider as sort of a the output all of the You know inner experiences that you're able to package into something and put it out into the world And then the other side is like everything that you're taking in and it's sort of the synergy or tango between the two So I wanted to take a few moments Introduce the topic that We'll be chatting about in more depth and sort of where this came from as we started workshopping it with cyan and and peepa I think for me some one of the things that I'm the most excited about in the world is Trying to think about what we can do to sort of mitigate some of the biggest risks that we're facing in the world And obviously there's so many of them across the board from, you know climate change to AGI and nuclear weapons and bio weapons and I've always thought of it as sort of You know collective wisdom being sort of this umbrella Idea on top of all of these other problems and risks that we're facing and that's something that we really need in order to be able To solve all of the individual Problems and their threats underneath it and when I've been thinking about collective wisdom or collective intelligence over the years It's just really dawned on me that we can't just keep Squeezing out of existing resources, which I think has been the tech industry has been so dominated by a lot of tools for further increasing productivity or Building out new innovations that further drive productivity in different ways, but we've largely In some ways ignored the other side of it, which I think is creativity So if we think about productivity being about squeezing everything out of existing resources and then creativity would be about creating new resources And that's why I think it's so important not just for ourselves on a personal sort of intellectual spiritual Human level but also in terms of unlocking new innovation and building a better society. So that's kind of maybe like the the idea behind wanting to put the center stage and have a real conversation and see What creativity can look like from building to investing and to operating and what its place might be in the tech industry, so Yeah, starting with questions Maybe first I am first What do you think art and creativity actually have to do with technology? We can just start from the very beginning. Could you ask that again? I apologize. Yeah What do you think art and technology have to do or sorry art and creativity have to do with technology? Oh, gosh. Well, I think of technology as art and creativity if you think about code And you think about creation in itself like All of these products every entrepreneur that starts out to create something Starts with a blank canvas the idea and then they have to turn it into something and a lot of times We don't even think about all of that is creative expression, but it absolutely is and so I think that you know Every single bit of technology and software and maybe it's a little bit broad for me to say that as a form of art and Pretty much everything really if you look at it through that lens as a form of art And so I I tend to when I when I'm investing Look through that lens and so I that's how I think about it Yeah, and when we first met you actually asked me a question that I've never stopped thinking about not that I'm obsessed with Kinder eggs or anything, but You asked me to tell you a story of the first time that I Ate a Kinder surprise egg Yeah, and I wanted to actually see if you wanted to share that story because I thought it was good So if you think about a lot of products that are out there like if you look at blog platforms X Facebook etc They give you a blank box and they ask you a question and you're supposed to go fill it out But what they don't do is try to prompt you along the way to try to get out valuable information That we as human beings have that we're losing every single day, which is our memories And so one of the things that I asked her was do you remember the first time you ever had a Kinder surprise egg? The reason why I use Kinder was because you're from Europe, but if you know if you're in America I might say a snicker bar and What's interesting is that people suddenly stop and they're like oh Yeah, I remember my first Kinder surprise egg. My first Kinder surprise egg was in Hong Kong and I was in my early 20s Working at a startup and I remember finding it and Opening it up and being so delighted with the toy inside and like wow this thing exists And of course we couldn't get those in America at the time where they were illegal or something like that But if you ask people like what's your if I said, you know, do you like McDonald's? Most people in here would be like no, I don't like McDonald's McDonald's is nasty. It's gross But if I said what's your favorite memory of McDonald's that's going to be a very very different answer And so I would love to see more startups and more companies starting to think about how to extract and get this type of Information from people because we're losing it every day. Yeah, and so it's just really sad to me And that's one of the reasons why I asked you it's just like how Could you share this memory with me and what startup is ever going to ask you that question because they haven't yet? Or also, I think a lot of us think that we are not You know interesting or that we don't have something to say and something to share in many instances And I really believe that everyone has something to say and something to share and it's really interesting to think that from the perspective of Building and investing into companies is like how can we actually use technology as a means to make people feel like they have something to say and something to share And maybe on that note people actually identity building I'm curious about how you think about identity build how identity building will develop online if we're thinking about Unlocking these sort of unprecedented amounts of human creativity. I Love these questions by the way So I think I mean building on from you know what signed is said I love this idea of the proverbial kinder egg surprise You know you open it and then you find this little toy And I think one of the things I'm most excited about at the moment is this sort of taking a sledgehammer to these traditional Constrains that creativity have been sort of placed within and I always think of that meme that I didn't if any of you guys have seen where it was like Okay, there's four pictures and it's like here's me on Twitter Here's me on Instagram is me on like LinkedIn and here's me on like github and it's basically four completely different identities that is you as a human squeezed into one of these sort of four structured profiles of your like Identity and it's always kind of bothered me that you would need to have four different You know tubes your beings, you know squeeze down and I think that we're actually in this new era Well, I'm hopeful that we can again take this sledgehammer to that and say well Why can't we all have a blank canvas to create our own? You know original into that 1.0 home page, you know Why can't we all have a blank canvas to project what it is what it means to be us and I think you know I've been playing on a few tools recently There's one which the sort of social whiteboarding app called ammo and most people are using this to post pictures of themselves And I think within the first 24 hours I'd used it to install a gaming center where you couldn't like find out clues about me There was like an e-commerce part where you could buy random Inocuous things that I thought were a part of my identity And then there were things like you know a DJ booth where I could put my favorite music So all of a sudden and setting up of having you know go to my LinkedIn go to my Twitter You can basically have a blank canvas, which is my identity As me and it can be dynamic it can evolve and other people can comment on that So I think with this new era of creative tools and again this idea that with some Tools like AI anyone with an imagination can now be a conceptual artist much more easily you've got these really Sort of user-friendly tools that we can all actually enter to this much more unbridled creative Future that before forced us to kind of be these sausages Made by the different Colorful sausage exactly Um Yeah, I wonder if Because if we all have the tools to be able to do from a technical and like a skill practical Perspective of what we would like to do if that actually kind of forces us to think more about the fundamentals of you know What we want to do and who we are if we can't use the excuse of that thing is hard to use or we need You know a lot of skill to be able to get to that level of even trying whether we're good at it If all of that is removed we kind of are I guess You know made to force ourselves and our ideas in a much more Aggressive way than if the barrier of getting there would be much higher There's a statement there's this There's this book by Joel Lehman and Kenneth Stanley. I hope I didn't mess up the names called why greatness cannot be planned Have you guys read it? No It's really good. It talks a lot about objectives versus serendipity, which I think ties into like sort of productivity versus creativity also really well and I think in that book there was a statement that I highlighted and I really loved that said The in the best innovators do their best innovations just by being themselves. What do you guys think about that? Oh for sure I mean You're gonna be your best at life if you figure out who you really truly are a period the end and you are just Yourself as much as you possibly can be. I know that's a bit of a luxury But it should be the thing that people strive for in life That's what I think anyway 100% look I think if we can all try and be as authentic as possible That's that's amazing and that for me is when I've seen you know the most creative ideas come to life Whether it be a founder that I'm investing in or whether it's an artist that I'm going to to visit a gallery So yeah, no totally agree Align your chakras to build the best products To what extent do you think that founders should? Take this seriously and sort of be aligned with the universe in order to Do their best work is that something worth even thinking about or considering on sort of more of an active basis? If you'd asked me that question a couple of years ago, I would have thought I would have said what are you talking about? Chakras what? But about a year and a half ago. I had an experience that changed my life and I became a much more spiritual person And I believe now absolutely. Yes You should have an open mind to it and I think that you now I'm willing to try everything I'm just like I went from like absolutely, you know There's nothing in the universe other than what exists right in front of us. There is no grand plan There is no anything to completely succumbing and submitting to the universe and now I build it as part of my investment practice And is what I do from a from day to day. So absolutely. I do think that, you know not just chakra stuff, but just sort of mental health and well-being and Your own identity and your own wellness is incredibly important, especially if you're an entrepreneur I had a panel earlier where we were talking About how you know if you're gonna be working 12 hour days seven days a week things like that Like you really do need to take care of who your core is who you really really truly are and if it's you know Meditation if it's chakra alignment if it's sauna in if it's whatever it takes, you know do it Because otherwise you're not gonna survive the journey So you you definitely should do it and I recommend it for everybody. What do you do? I meditate So I meditate an unreasonable amount probably by most people's standards So usually two to three hours a day and that might be shocking But that's my nighttime routine and then afterwards I journal all of the revelations that come from that meditation And then I do a small meditation in the morning before I start my day What about you people? I Also love meditating and I'm a big fan of journaling. I think it's born out of my obsession always with I love writing I always grew up doing a lot of writing as well And I think I've I've actually really transformed that as well into a place where in my creative process whether I'm sitting down and I'm going to write a short piece of fiction or if I want to you know do some Portrait chair or painting. I'm still a big artist in my spare time Then I actually try and just grab a piece of paper and start kind of writing out thoughts I find that's also a very meditative experience when it comes to to work as well And really trying to think at the core of of you know again So for example in our work as venture capitalists, you know What is the true essence of this problem that that needs to be solved? And am I really inspired by it? And Yeah, I do all the sort of wellness things as well. How many artists VCs. Do you think there are? It's not so many of us. I don't think there's many of us And I forgot my hats my cowboy hats day, so sorry guys Yeah If we just go back to the sort of future of work question people What do you think creativity over productivity? What what do you think that looks like in terms of what kind of companies will be built? And if we're really kind of going for the moonshot generational companies, what are you imagining? I? think it's a really important question and Not to be too nerdy But I do often go on like two by twos and I think if we put Creativity on the y-axis and productivity on the x-axis you've got on the sort of like bottom right quadrant The pure productivity hacks so that could be things like Supernormal or auto AI which are just really helpful things that can make us all more productive Whether it be in the workspace or whether in our personal lives They're just kind of like useful tools along the sort of like top left quadrant You've got things which are just pure pure creative delight And it's the kind of thing that I spend a lot of time on whether it be like in a dali or you know stable diffusion just building really cool creativity for creativity's sake So I think for me where I'm looking to find like really What I think will be generational defining companies is is in that like top right quadrant where you've got that blend of like super high creativity and super high productivity and You definitely do have ones that are kind of in-betweens, so I'm a big fan of notions So I think that you know that's it's kind of creative, but it's you know fundamentally product product productivity tool But if we really stick to that top right quadrant, you've got companies that as I said a peak creativity and peak productivity and I think a great example of that is Runway ML. I'm just picking one for an example that we talked about where It's you know helping people anyone again with an imagination can become a you know movie producer Effectively it's really really high quality text to to video and film based Products so that for me is the kind of quadrant I'm looking for but I still you know I still love the the tools and the other other quadrants as well Yeah, I've been thinking about the XY axis myself a lot But I've called it like utility and then sort of social creativity and interesting I'm actually not even great like just utility and social because And it's really interesting when you look at products And if you've really kind of examined yourself in terms of what you use it for I think a lot of the time We think that we're using it for different things then we actually are using it and I find that I actually very funny and surprising at least like from a personal perspective and Say and what do you think? Same question. Well, I think I want to talk about why I'm excited about these products because in a world that seems increasingly more dark by the day where we have wars where we have Issues that you might even argue we should be thinking more about than this I would argue the opposite, which is if you look at generational Theory and you look at let's just go back to the 60s to look at the Vietnam War Out of that came one of the most amazing creative Periods of our time if you look at the hippie movement if you look at the rock and roll movement If you look at the art movement that came out of that in order to protest in order to have a voice in order to Speak about the issues that are dark in this world. We have to tap on creativity. And so I think that You know creativity used to be something that was reserved for the elite Which was you know, you had to be an artist or you had to have a certain number of hours to master a skill But now because of AI we can Do all sorts of really amazing things and I know that's controversial right now Like if you create something on mid-journey is it art, right? But I would argue that it is because I think that when you're taking an idea and you're giving it to a co-author like AI and you're coming out with this amazing image afterwards You're basically a person who never had the time or the ability to master Photoshop or become a film editor Yeah, suddenly able to get these ideas out of their head out onto a canvas for the first time So I think we're gonna see Unprecedented creativity all of the signage that you see around the world is gonna change You know, I told my partner that the other day I'm like look at all the signs around us They're all gonna be different because now you don't have to go to a sign shop you can actually you know And yes, we're going to see a disruption in the workplace We're gonna see a whole bunch of industries Consolidate get destroyed and everything in between but that happened with the printing press that happened with Adobe Photoshop And you know, yes, it's all scary, but at the same time, you know I I'm just so incredibly excited about it because for the first time in human history Everyone's gonna have a paintbrush and everyone's gonna be able to get something outside of their body into the world And so that's why it's important, you know, I I think that a lot of people criticize Why are we even talking about something like this in this day and age when you know stuff so bad? But it's imperative that we create these tools It's imperative that we invest in them and that people are able to express themselves Yeah, I really think everyone is a wizard now We've all been given these like magic paint brushes and said okay now go paint and how cool is that? We all want to be wizards. Yeah. Yeah really unlocking creativity in unprecedented ways, but if we I Guess something that I'm kind of always curious about is that what I was sort of alluding to earlier Is that if we're all able to do something now that doesn't mean that we all will just do it now? Because there's only a limited 24 hours in the day and we all have to pick our priorities and decide what's personally important and interesting For us, so what do you think are some of the things that do you think that there's gonna be any? Change in the way that people Think about themselves and their skills and how they can apply those skills if updating those kind of skills becomes easier Well, sure Yeah, what do you think that will be? I don't know off the top of my head I'm gonna let Pipa go there. No, I was thinking I'll let's start with that But no, I mean look I think that Again, it's it's enabling anyone that previously, you know, you don't have to have gone to art school You don't have to have gone to formal training and and you can essentially now Skip a lot of that and go straight to you know this this core of you know, what do I want to put out? I love that get out of my body and like put it into this world And I think that people are gonna use that in different ways again if I use this this product I was playing around with last week ID by ammo, you know Everyone gets a blank canvas and most people have just put on like a few nice pictures and I created my jukebox I created my my and my DJ booth. I created my game center So my reality is very different to someone else's and people use tools in in different ways And I think that's the beauty of it. Yeah, is that all the idiots and crassities that make us Idiot synchroses that make us human. I think are going to be Splashed out on on literal canvases all over the world and and we'll get to enjoy that Yeah, maybe we can focus more on the ideas. Yeah, I'm wondering how consumerism will change with a lot of this stuff because when you can sit one of the things that I really love is a Lot of these tools scratch this itch of what if this were possible? what if I could do this and There's never really been anything That really gave everyone that ability to scratch that itch and once you scratch it You're kind of done. You don't need to go buy the thing necessarily. So like Even on mid-journey, I can create all these amazing outfits, right and have fun with me as amazing as this one No, this one was off of Instagram But I can I am making outfits off of AI actually I started getting custom Seamstress work where I taken a picture that I've generated on there I've started having AI be my stylist. I mean the whole reason why I have this outfit is because of AI That's amazing. I think it's such a cool point, right? Is that I think we are now people are so afraid that we're moving into this new generation of like only AI and I think It's the blend which is actually what we're seeing, you know Why can't you take something which is which originated in AI and actually make it IRL and have it in in the real threads And have your tailor literally make an AI outfit. I think that's super cool And I'm also really excited about I guess like spatial mapping and some of the kind of AI AI stuff we're we're seeing through different hardwares where you are seeing this blended, you know reality now and You know, we've just been able to Express creativity in multiple formats, which we were never able to do without that technology previously Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking a lot of it also in just terms of search and discovery. So I for example, I'm really into Like I like to read sometimes I like to just read one page for a really long time Like I'll just kind of study the page rather than trying to get on with the story of it because you can find so much with an individual sentences and I'm always like looking for these kind of sentences that Communicate the sort of concise idea in pretty simple ways But that at the same time feels really poetic and that's something that I can't just put a feeler out in the world I mean like find me all the cool poetic sentences that sort of tickle my sensibilities But also communicate a powerful idea in a consens concise way, but I think we'll be able to do this with You know with the help of LLM's to actually just get to the things that make us have these like great epiphanies and aha moments Much faster and then I hope that if we do that we're able to build on it ourselves and to actually make something more sort of Profound and powerful with the ideas Say and what does serendipity to mean to you and the context of in the context of creating online Kind of continuing with the same bread a thread and maybe like how does this play out in action in terms of both building and investing? Well prior to the pandemic We used to run into each other at work in various places And you would have this sort of aha moment that would come in the moment where I'd be like Eda. Oh, there you are I was just thinking of something and I thought about you and But now that's not happening as much because now we're remote and there's these zoom calls And when you get on a zoom call you're in this weird container of context that you're not supposed to break out of and So you can't just you know have these serendipitous moments where you're running into people and colliding and so I really would like to see how We solve this with technology because there's not a lot of collisions happening and that's where Businesses in general come up with their best ideas is Those spur of the moment things that happen where all of a sudden you have that epiphany and that aha You know you're not going to have that on a zoom call because we're supposed to talk about an agenda on there And get through it and then get to the next call and the next call in the next column by the time of that You're just like okay. I'm worn out But you know so I do think that the future of creativity online needs to involve tools and Entrepreneurs need to think about how are we going to collaborate with one another? How are we going to go down rabbit holes with one another? How are we going to reach for the highest answer? You know and find it In in this world that we're now facing where remote work seems to be the future I mean, I know some businesses are going back to in person but for the most part I think that we're done with that and So that's one of the things that I'm excited about and looking forward to and hope to see more founders working in that area Yeah, enabling the density of serendipity as a friend of my said it. Yes. Yeah, absolutely people What are you looking for as an investor when? Investing into the future of creativity online like is there something particular that's constantly sort of at the back of Your mind when you're talking to founders and I'm making I think I think the first thing I'm looking for is consistent No matter which sector I'm investing in and if we call this like broadly creativity that could be in a lot of different things Right, I think at the most core. I'm looking for really wild thinkers So I want people to think of the impossible and tell me the steps that they're going to try and take to get there And I think especially Investing at the earlier stage. I typically invest at pre seed and seed that by far is the most important thing I want to understand how you think and how big you can think and They say obviously the second part if we're going to put the investor hat on is there is of course a part of me Which is wants to know okay What is your view and your evolving view on how you can carve out a really meaningful piece of a particular problem that you're Trying to solve and is actually there a business model at the end of it Which has the ability to kind of scale and be defensible but I would really caveat that I typically focus on the first one a lot more and You know if if someone is giving me both I will essentially wait a lot more to the first one that I will to the second because if they're the right founder They will find the right way to to get to that outcome The there's a very intense orange paper going on in the screen that I think says our time is up So thank you guys both and thank you to the audience for being here and listening us blab about the future of creativity online Thank you