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Mark, welcome to the podcast.

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Hi there, thanks.

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So we were just talking before recording, and it was already a podcast.

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And I'm like, damn, we're getting some good stuff in here.

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So you teed up my first question brilliantly, and it's a great place to start.

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Why is digital censorship important?

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And even if you're someone that thinks that your digital habits are of no interest to someone

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whatsoever, why is it still also important for that person?

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Yeah, I mean, I think about certain freedoms that people enjoy in their life.

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And depending on the country that you live in, you might have things that are codified in the legal structure of the country.

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Or other ones might just be within your community.

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But we all have this human right to be able to speak freely, to be able to express ourselves freely, to congregate and choose who we want to associate with.

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And that has spread online.

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And as it's moved online, you have this push and pull between governments and borderless communication with people.

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You know, you and I live in totally different countries, but here we are having a conversation together, right?

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You are bound by the rules of the jurisdiction that you live in.

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I'm bound by my jurisdiction.

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Yet, we also kind of are bound by this larger global internet that we're on.

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And so digital censorship is this weird thing where local governments try to step in and pull back what people can say and do, even though really we kind of live outside of them in a lot of ways.

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And so I don't know if it's this old way of doing things that's trying to hold on to the power and authority that it has while it's losing grip.

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but most people don't really

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think about it on their daily lives. They just go about doing what they do

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and they think, well, I don't have anything to say

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that's going to run afoul of the government and so I don't need

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to have really protection for my digital life

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but it's really when you need it that

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you wish you had it and so we need people out there kind of building

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tools and building ways for us to protect those freedoms so that we don't one day need the

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freedoms and and they aren't there anymore and the tools aren't there for it not sure if that

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answers your question but no no completely big one to start with oh absolutely mark and it's very

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exciting to get to spend an hour with you and talk through what does that mean um so was there a

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a personal experience in your life where this subject became important for you

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yeah uh there's not like a single instance where i suddenly was censored or i was being held back

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but what it is is i i've done a few different startups than early employee at a few different

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companies and i was able to kind of see inside of how the cloud works right we all talk about the

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cloud we put our data in the cloud we we have these apps and everybody kind of knows that phrase

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but a lot of people don't really understand what it means and so it was it was one of the company

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i was i was at is we were doing online backup software where people could back up their computers

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and all of their photos all of their documents everything that they had could be backup to our

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servers and it's it's secure right we have these we have this um you log in with your password

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it copies all your files over using what they say quote military grade encryption

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but ultimately what ends up is this large database of files of other people's computers

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in this huge cloud infrastructure at this company and then me as a trusted employee of the company

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i would i was one of the engineers but sometimes i had to help do support so i would be able to

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go in and see people's files because they would ask me to help them get their photos back because

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their hard drive had a crash. And it was in that moment where I started looking around and seeing,

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I can actually see all this data. I shouldn't be looking at someone's birthday photos or their

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family vacation photos or something that they did. This is not mine. This feels invasive.

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And it was this light bulb moment of, if I can see this, everybody else at the company that has

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the same privilege I do can see this. That means that if there's a court order, which we have this

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all the time where a local court or a government will come to us and say, we need these files for

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this investigation that we're doing. Suddenly, all these files that we thought were just private,

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I took a photo of my kid's birthday party. I thought that was private. But really,

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as soon as I snapped that photo, it was automatically copied from my phone to someone

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else's computer called the cloud. And it became available for hundreds to maybe thousands of

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people and then others down the line that I didn't know existed that would get access to that photo.

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And so that was just, it reframed the way that I looked at the internet. And then there are so

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many points at which censorship can come in. Governments could step in, companies could step in,

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and you create these gates where people can shut the gate on you. And yeah, that was kind of

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a moment that I just kind of had an awakening for that. But then also kind of tangential to that

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is when blogs really started to become a big thing. Everybody was writing their blogs,

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whether they were family ones or they were company ones. And I remember I had a friend who had spent

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years by that point, a couple of years really curating their family blog.

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and they had it all hosted in Google

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and they lost access to their Google account for some reason.

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And there was no warning.

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They didn't know why.

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They just couldn't log in,

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but it wasn't because they didn't have the right password.

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Google had basically frozen their account

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and suddenly all of these memories

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that they had written about

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and all of the photos that they had posted

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were just shut out and they couldn't access it.

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It had been taken offline

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and they were given no reason why.

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Um, and it was, to me, that was just a moment where it didn't affect me personally, but it

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affected a dear friend that I had.

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And I just saw like how powerless we are to some of these companies.

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When we give them all of the data, it really becomes their data.

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It's not our data anymore.

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And they have total control, whether it's accidental or intentional to just turn it

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off whenever they want to.

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Yeah.

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And it doesn't almost matter if there's some kind of nefarious angle to some dissidents

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somewhere has got an opinion that someone doesn't like how we're going to try and throttle that

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issue okay we're going to go to these three companies one of them is their bank one of them

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is the one that has all of their data by their phone and the other one is you know who knows

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it could just be any old person at home that for some reason their account just doesn't open

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um wow okay and what i love mark is how what brings us to today is the sum of every decision

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we've made thus far, this very present moment.

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And the experiences that we collect along the way

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sometimes don't really make sense.

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But in hindsight, you can patch them together and go,

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ah, this is actually now the direction I should go in.

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And I feel like that's obviously what you're doing.

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But so those were some pain points.

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What has been inspired as a result

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of going through those issues you saw?

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well i every time i i start working on something whether it is a personal project or a job that i

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take at a company or now i've started a company i've always wanted to i've wanted to provide for

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my family like first and foremost i have a family and i want to provide for them like that's that's

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what i do but i also want to do that in a way that i feel like i'm giving back to society and

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I'm doing something for the world, whether that is the large W world where I'm actually

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making an impact globally, or that is the world around me or the world of a few people.

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And so one of the companies I worked at was an education startup where we were trying

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to make software that allowed students to learn better and professors to teach better

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to their students and leverage technology in ways that made their lives easier.

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And I've worked on apps where kids could, if they had a speech impediment and they, you know, they grew up with a stutter or they grew up not being able to say there are correctly, they could use our iPad app that we had and work with a therapist and gain gain that skill to be able to speak more eloquently, but also have more confidence in their life as they are interacting with friends and their peers in school.

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so I've always tried to to use and build technology that helps people in their lives

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not just helping them to make money but really like truly trying to empower people

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and trying to give people more confidence give people you know some some extra value in their

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life so that's really kind of I feel like what I took from that very first job that I had

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where I started to understand how how the whole cloud works and how technology works and like

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What can we do that's good with this technology rather than just how can I make the most money?

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How can I get somebody addicted to a game and just make this game that just like drives it up the charts?

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And you mentioned, I think before we started recording, you know, how can I play to an algorithm?

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Right. I don't want to just be playing this algorithm game.

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I really want to be building something that that brings people actual value and joy in their lives.

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yeah and the context there being um you asked me before we started recording who my core audience

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is as part of this podcast and i explained that it was changing but mainly because i had changed

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and essentially had realized that chasing the algorithm by hammering youtube in particular

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was not something that i wanted to go and do and and now that i stepped back from that and really

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want to spend my time and attention on Nostra. What's interesting is how my Nostra experience

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has improved. Just every time I log in, I'm seeing more high quality content and getting better

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feedback from the accounts that I've started spending more time inputting energy into. So

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this is very, very strange process where like, instead of turning up on someone else's digital

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real estate, where you are essentially rent seeking until they don't want you any longer,

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you're actually you're building a ecosystem of uh connections where you have put capital

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essentially into what you get back um and that's a big big shift so it's it's fun to see how

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how other people are also doing that and nost is where we we came across each other and

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how we've even organized this this podcast which i think is such a cool thing to have

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been able to do because everyone's like oh nostr no one uses it you know nothing's going on there

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it's like well actually that's not true um so so maybe i'll give you a simple question now mark

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which is like why are you using nostr yeah uh i i got on nostr the same way that a lot of people

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did a few years ago jack dorsey put out a tweet about it and that's when i heard about it and i

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like, oh my goodness, you have private public key pairs that are used for your online communication.

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And when you create a message, it is signed with your private key. And now it can be sent around

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the world. And everybody knows that that message you just wrote is really from your private key.

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And that's something that you said. And it just clicked for me. I was like, that is how we should

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be doing things. When I have a Twitter account, X, or Facebook or Instagram, people, we kind of

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think it's the same way, right? We sign in with a username and a password. But really, that's just

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granting us permission to go say something on someone else's computer in the cloud. Whereas

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with Noster, it is a way for me to create a piece of content and then say, this is from me.

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and then all I have to do is just broadcast that out and I can copy it to a whole bunch of people's

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computers but it's something that I know I'm sharing publicly and it was it's the subtle

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difference to I think to a lot of people who don't really like know about private key public

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key cryptography it's a it's a very odd difference but it has such a profound effect especially

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when you bring in this whole AI thing that we're dealing with now, where pretty much any video

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that's posted online, the first thing people ask is, is this real, right? Grok, is this real? Is

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this true? Is this fake? Is this AI? And so now we have this tool, we can start to show, well, yeah,

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maybe you can't prove that this video is real, but I can prove that it was spoken from me,

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or I have access to my private key.

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I know that it's coming from me

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and everybody else knows that it's coming from me.

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So that way, if you're on Twitter,

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Elon or some employee there could just go in

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and just say anything on my behalf.

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And now the burden is on me to prove

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that that wasn't me who said that.

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And it could be very damaging information

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that is supposedly said from my account.

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And so I just love knowing that with Noster,

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I can do things and have authenticity with it.

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And I guess I would kind of ask you maybe

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if I could ask you a question.

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No, no, please Mark, anything.

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Yeah, I think a lot of us,

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our interface with Noster is a Twitter-like app,

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an X-like experience.

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Curious how you view Noster,

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if you think that that's really going to continue

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to be the main interface,

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or if you see other ways that you think Nostr really continues to grow

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and people maybe experience Nostr through different interfaces Just curious what your thoughts are there Great question To dovetail on the back of kind of what you were saying was

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I just never fully understood how much heavy lifting a Facebook and Instagram

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or Twitter was doing for me until I started using Noster.

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And so I was like, oh, I want to put a video up.

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How do I do that?

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So, oh, you can't.

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You need to host it yourself.

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oh okay well how do i do that oh okay here's nostr.build okay cool sign up boom upload your

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own video okay then you can release it onto the nostr network you're like oh my god so hang on

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all this information i've ever put on a traditional social media platform is somewhere

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being stored by them where the the user experience has been incentivized to be as easy and as simple

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as possible to get you to use it but at what cost and well the cost is quite simple you're

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batting on someone else's digital real estate that if you misbehave in a way they don't like

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or you say something you shouldn't say or their advertising partners are like we don't like this

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guy over here because they're saying things about stuff that we don't want to have talked about

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well they're gone right and this whole idea of freedom of reach is not the same as freedom of

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speech and so you can go on and say what you like but literally no one's going to see it because

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it'll get buried and you can search for accounts and they you find them eventually but like then

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they're not the algorithm is not being coached to show them to anyone and so so my my nostre

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experience is is so different it really couldn't be it's almost like a complete opposite um and

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when i get a bit spiritual these days i'm like that's that's so healthy right it's this

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centralization versus decentralization.

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It's the pendulum swinging back in a different direction.

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And like, I use Primal all the time.

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And what's interesting about that experience

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is how much better it's got

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versus when I first started using it.

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And for example, you've got to use Nostradot build,

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you upload some video or some content,

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you're actually doing that yourself,

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you're seeing, oh, that's how that actually

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gets pieced together.

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The process of it improving, I think, is interesting because initially you don't follow anyone.

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So, OK, well, hang on.

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How do I find any information on this fucking thing?

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And actually, even finding accounts can still be quite difficult, right?

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I had Scott Deedles on the podcast recently, and I just typed in his name.

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Couldn't find him.

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Had him on the pod.

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He said, oh, I'm on Noster.

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Searched Lantern Bitcoin.

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Found that and found his account.

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But it's still not working as well as it could.

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but the point is I see the information that's posted by the accounts that I follow

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that's it yes you could do some trending stuff that you know a client might show you such as

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as primal and they have different qualifications for like what actually should make the trending

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page in terms of the popularity of a post but at the end of the day it's just a chronological

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timeline of the people that I follow you know interesting and there are people that I start

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following that post all this stuff I don't like get rid of them but there's essentially there's

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been a proof of work involved in curating my NOSTA experience. And that's been a fascinating

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process. So, I mean, have you been similar like that, Mark? Like, because I feel like I created

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a key pair, logged in, I was like, this is garbage, I'm not going to go near this thing.

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And then I did it again. And then a client had slightly improved, and I tried a different client.

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And then I just really started to think about why it was important. And it's like headwinds

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versus tailwinds. And the headwinds for NOSTA is like the UX is not great. There's not enough users

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on that. There's information that you need to get that's actually elsewhere. And therefore,

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you have to go and find it. But then the tailwinds are like censorship is getting more and more rife.

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And what's authentic? That's such a great word that you use. It's like, I don't want to get

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information that's not authentic. That's a complete waste of my time. So I'm actually

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willing to accept the cost of a ux experience that isn't as good as elsewhere in exchange for

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better value basically um yeah has your nostril experience improved over time yeah no it's

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definitely improved and i still i still use it like a twitter product a twitter competitor um

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and like you were saying when i first got on there it just it continued to remind me of all

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the data that we're giving over to other people as you start to piece together these pieces these

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things right like nostr.build i remember going on there and being like how do i upload a photo

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and then as soon as i go to upload this photo to nostr.build i think well wait a minute are they

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gonna have the location data of this photo that i'm uploading because i don't know this guy that's

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running nostr.build yeah um and i'm about to transmit this thing over to him i don't know

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the answer to that i've never checked i wouldn't know uh they i believe they scrub the a lot of

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these services scrub out. I know Primal specifically will get rid of your location data when you upload

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it. But no, it's good to think about these things, right? And we usually don't, especially on

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something like Instagram. They actually promote keeping your location data because they want to

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show where you were so that all your friends can see where you were at that moment. This is a really

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funny phenomenon. I don't know if you have children or how old they are, but my kids will share their

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location with their friends. It's like this new thing that they all do. And they'll be like,

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oh, I see where my friends all are right now. And they know where I am. And to me, one, I don't want

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my kids sharing where the location is, but they do it. And then two, it creates like this anxiety

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that they have where now not only do they feel like, you know, if you would go to school on a

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Monday, and everybody's talking about this party that they went to, and you didn't go to the party,

254
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you feel bad, right? Well, now the kid is sitting at home on their phone and they see that all their

255
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friends are at one location together at some party and they are not with them. And then they

256
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start to see all the photos come up on Instagram that they're not at, you know? And so now they're

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just feeling down in that moment. And then they still have to go to school and interact with all

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these people and feel down again. And so there are all these ways that technology has kind of

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created these, these abilities for us to like have anxiety, have depression, have these weird

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social interactions. And maybe there's another side to that that we come out and we're all better

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for it because we figured out how to use it. I feel like that was kind of a tangent to what I was

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talking about, but there is all this data that we're just giving out to different systems.

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And when I got on Noster, it continued to be this moment where I realized, okay,

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it's a reminder, I'm giving away this data. I'm giving away this information.

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Who is this person running it? What can they do with it? Do I want to be giving it to them?

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So it helped me kind of start to sanitize my technology use a little bit more.

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With Noster, you know, I got on right away.

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I was really excited about it.

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I used it a lot for the first few months.

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And then I kind of took a break for a little bit because, like you said, it was just kind of this wild, wild west.

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This is back in like early 2023 now.

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And I took a break and then I came back like six months later and it's like, oh, hey, this thing is still on.

273
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People are still posting.

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and I could see the difference between using Twitter and using Noster and just like the feed

275
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I was getting. The stuff on X, no matter how hard you try, becomes very politicized, at least in my

276
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world where I am in the United States. It's constantly trying to shove things into your feed

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that feel divisive, that make you feel bad afterwards when you're done. And I didn't want

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to see that i still use x because i do it for work and you know i do it for industry news especially

279
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with ai moving so fast but when i'm when i'm really wanting to take a moment to just kind of

280
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like interact with the internet i go to i go to nostr i go to primal i get on there because i feel

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like that's where a lot of more high quality content is or high quality discussion um and

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and i really enjoy that whereas when i feel like i when i'm on x i feel like i am just being kind

283
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of shoved around inside of an algorithm constantly that's been my experience at least and and how you

284
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feel is so important because there's there's i've been making content for like five years now in

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different different guises worked a few different businesses had a different podcast of my own and

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i'm now creating this one and so i've toyed around with lots of these different platforms and just

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There's no doubt that I feel more relaxed as a Nostia user.

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And that's because you're not being psychologically played in the same way that the legacy status quo social media platforms have begun to do in order to keep your attention because they make money from your eyeballs.

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What would be fun about Nostia, for example, is if you did take a break for six months and then you log back in, you're like, oh, hey, guys, took six months off.

290
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all the same people would still be there and you wouldn't get fed an algorithm um when you come

291
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back so i think it's like it's kind of like you get to keep your work in like a truer capital

292
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accumulation sense um i want to answer your question more directly that you brought up

293
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earlier about do i just use it as a twitter like experience thus far yes but i'm interested in

294
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early stage equity investing and startups. And I've seen some pitch decks for other stuff that

295
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is really interesting. For example, one was around medical records. And it was a problem that just

296
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resonated straight away where it's like, it's so goddamn annoying when you go into a practitioner's

297
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office, and it might be a chiropractor or an osteopath or whoever it is you're going to get

298
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treatment from. Like, so here's a piece of paper. What have you done in your life? You're like,

299
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I'm 37 years old now, mate.

300
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What do you want to know?

301
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When I threw myself down a mountain as a 19-year-old on a pair of skis

302
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or when I had a motorbike accident or when I was sick two days ago?

303
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Do you know what I mean?

304
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And so the concept that they were highlighting was with a Nostra key pair,

305
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you could – it's like it's got the potential to better manage

306
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the blend of secrecy and privacy.

307
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And so I want to selectively withhold some information from the world

308
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and that I'm going to keep.

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But for this chiropractor, great. You can see my medical history. Here it is. And having that controlled by the user rather than some either third party private business that is a honeypot for hackers or a government that, heaven forbid, might weaponize it in some kind of political sense.

310
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that was a cool concept and i also saw some stuff around insurance policies i think really what it

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boils down to in terms of like the non-twitter like experience that you could have on nostr is

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the idea of a digital identity and it's not oh hey guys by the way we're the european union

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and because we feel like it everyone's got to have this digital id and it's going to be connected to

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this cbdc that we're about to roll out and yeah like we're the good guys right so you know we're

315
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going to make it really easy for you to use and anyone that doesn't like it well we're all going

316
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to start you know we're going to start taxing them more highly we're going to take away anyone's

317
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financial services licenses that want to do things that are free and open source and you know it's

318
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crazy world that we live in today that the the ability for for censorship is just so high it's

319
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wouldn't it be interesting if this information was all in the hands of the user and that's what

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i think gnostic can become yes well we went through this worldwide event five or six years ago

321
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where we learned what governments can do if they have information about us right and information

322
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that seemed harmless at the time suddenly it's like well you need to have this little piece of

323
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paper that shows that you were injected with something in order to go eat at a restaurant

324
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that you've eaten that for 10 years in your life, right?

325
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To go get a coffee.

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And I mean, this is the constant conversation

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with privacy discussions of like,

328
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I don't have anything to hide, right?

329
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Why do I need to care about privacy?

330
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I have nothing, I'm not doing anything bad.

331
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I'm not a criminal.

332
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I'm just a normal guy.

333
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I'm just a normal guy, yeah.

334
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But it's like you said,

335
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that saying of being able to selectively

336
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reveal yourself to the world.

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That's really what we all deserve as human beings.

338
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And every single person does it.

339
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even if they don't realize they're doing it. But we are inside our house, we close our door.

340
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We maybe close the windows or pull the drapes. There are all sorts of reasons why we want to

341
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shut ourselves off at certain moments. And we're not doing any bad things. But then we step outside

342
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and we selectively reveal ourselves. What do we do before we step outside? We usually get dressed.

343
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maybe we do our hair uh you know if we have makeup we do our makeup we we make ourselves

344
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presentable to the world and we do that intentionally and that all comes back to to

345
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privacy really and so you talk about these medical records and that's a cool concept to be able to

346
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have control over that and and cryptic cryptographically own your own medical history

347
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with your nostril key pair i think that's really cool um and i don't know if you've ever tried to

348
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get medical records from a practitioner that you went to in the past, but it's like very difficult

349
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to get your data back from them. If you know, if you show up to a new medical office, like you said,

350
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they give you that piece of paper you need to fill out. If you were like, hey, I actually did all

351
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this at the previous place. Can I just like go copy that and bring it over here? That process is

352
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like almost non-existent to do. It's going to take you probably weeks to get information from your

353
00:28:40,535 --> 00:28:43,935
previous person. And then it's not in the same format that it needs to be to give to the new

354
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person so i think it's that's a that's an interesting concept to be able to use nostr

355
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to say no this is my data these are my health records i've collected them all and here i'm

356
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going to now transmit them to you but only selectively transmit the stuff that i want to

357
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i think that's a really cool use for this this technology and really comes comes back to like

358
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people in nostr love to say that this is a new way of building the internet

359
00:29:08,535 --> 00:29:16,755
I do think that's possible. I think that the legacy internet still plays a part in that somehow.

360
00:29:16,955 --> 00:29:35,229
I haven quite figured this out but I do think that Nostra becomes this really important layer infused on the internet of this digital identity that kind of turns everything on its head If we really kind of extrapolate it out long term and see like where could this all go What if we rebuilt the internet where all of us have this cryptographic identity that we control

361
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How does this behave differently? And you can't really control the flow of information.

362
00:29:40,989 --> 00:29:46,949
I think it's a really, really fascinating topic to go down and you can pull almost any technology

363
00:29:46,949 --> 00:29:51,229
that's online and say, what if we infuse Nostra into that? How does that change?

364
00:29:51,909 --> 00:29:53,989
and things start to look a little different.

365
00:29:54,489 --> 00:29:56,330
And I think probably for the better,

366
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if we can have really good data security, right?

367
00:29:59,709 --> 00:30:01,349
You got to keep track of your Nostra keys.

368
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You can't lose them.

369
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We have to find ways to let people rotate into a new key

370
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and say, this is me on the new key.

371
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I think there's stuff to still solve there,

372
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but a lot of promising things that can come out of it.

373
00:30:14,330 --> 00:30:19,629
Yeah, just on the key management of your NSEC specifically,

374
00:30:19,949 --> 00:30:21,749
this is something that's come up a little bit

375
00:30:21,749 --> 00:30:27,609
where it's like okay i was just playing around right and i was signing up for clients left right

376
00:30:27,609 --> 00:30:33,109
and center with an insect that i had and i don't know where those businesses even are today right

377
00:30:33,109 --> 00:30:39,629
and will that create headache for me in the future i don't know the same problem pretty much applies

378
00:30:39,629 --> 00:30:45,969
to every early nos to use it because we were all kind of doing the same thing but yeah um a piece of

379
00:30:45,969 --> 00:30:51,909
good advice it was corn delorean shout out to to that man that you know have an nsec that you just

380
00:30:51,909 --> 00:30:55,989
play with and have one that you're using every day and the one you use every day you keep very

381
00:30:55,989 --> 00:30:59,949
very private and the other one you can more liberally sign into things to like give them a

382
00:30:59,949 --> 00:31:07,449
test and see what it's like um mark and and i think this is actually kind of what my podcast

383
00:31:07,449 --> 00:31:12,469
trajectory is all about so much in common with someone like yourself who's clearly done a bunch

384
00:31:12,469 --> 00:31:17,889
of stuff in their life that I a find interesting but b we're on Nostra hanging out and and immediately

385
00:31:17,889 --> 00:31:22,749
you've got stuff that you you completely align with and I think that's so valuable um I don't

386
00:31:22,749 --> 00:31:28,529
want to go the whole way through the podcast and not talk about Maple and so let's spend a bit of

387
00:31:28,529 --> 00:31:33,830
time like hammering that out because um you're building a business take me to the starting point

388
00:31:33,830 --> 00:31:41,789
like why did you decide to start why did you decide to start Maple yeah well um most recently

389
00:31:41,789 --> 00:31:47,109
before Maple, I was at Apple and I'd been there for about six years. I was a software engineer over

390
00:31:47,109 --> 00:31:54,669
there and I was working on a project for the company and it dealt with AI, machine learning,

391
00:31:55,289 --> 00:32:01,429
and then Apple does care very much about privacy. It's their public statement that they make. It's

392
00:32:01,429 --> 00:32:05,949
the public persona that they put on, but it's something that they actually do care very much

393
00:32:05,949 --> 00:32:15,349
about internally. So our project, we had this ability to be invasive with our users and with

394
00:32:15,349 --> 00:32:19,389
our customers. And we could learn a lot of information about them through this tool that

395
00:32:19,389 --> 00:32:26,869
I was building. Or we could choose to do it with a privacy way and say, let's throw away all the

396
00:32:26,869 --> 00:32:31,249
data we don't need, or let's not even collect the data in the first place. Because really,

397
00:32:31,249 --> 00:32:37,169
we only want to get this one piece of information. And that one piece of information does not need to

398
00:32:37,169 --> 00:32:43,649
be tied to anybody's identity. And from talking to friends who work at other big tech companies,

399
00:32:44,209 --> 00:32:49,509
that conversation just wouldn't have been had. They would have gathered the information and they

400
00:32:49,509 --> 00:32:53,709
would have stuck it on a database just in case, right? Oh, we might need this in the future.

401
00:32:53,809 --> 00:32:59,129
There might be a way to monetize it in the future. But when I got on this project, within just the

402
00:32:59,129 --> 00:33:04,889
first few weeks, I was on a phone call with a privacy lawyer, an internal privacy lawyer at

403
00:33:04,889 --> 00:33:10,309
Apple saying, all right, here's this project you're working on. Talk to me, describe the project to me.

404
00:33:10,389 --> 00:33:13,969
So I walked through everything we were working on. They said, okay, here are all the data points

405
00:33:13,969 --> 00:33:20,469
that you will likely be collecting along the way. And we don't want you to collect this like 90% of

406
00:33:20,469 --> 00:33:27,409
it. And if you do, you have to like explain why and be very intentional about it. So I just,

407
00:33:27,409 --> 00:33:32,769
I love that. I love that aspect of it. It makes your work very difficult because now you are

408
00:33:32,769 --> 00:33:37,669
having to go through technical hurdles. We had to build brand new technology that wasn't,

409
00:33:37,830 --> 00:33:42,149
we couldn't pull stuff off the shelf and use to help us create this because that stuff off the

410
00:33:42,149 --> 00:33:48,689
shelf was not, it was collecting too much data. So we had to build new tools. So I saw kind of

411
00:33:48,689 --> 00:33:55,609
this way that things can be done there. But coming from a bunch of startups, I started to get this

412
00:33:55,609 --> 00:34:02,109
itch like hey i feel like there's something that can be done outside of apple um i was i was getting

413
00:34:02,109 --> 00:34:07,909
on nostr i was doing a lot of stuff um i was also i've been a bitcoiner for a long time and so i saw

414
00:34:07,909 --> 00:34:13,769
like hey there might be something to build in bitcoin space so um really you know you and i

415
00:34:13,769 --> 00:34:18,829
connected here over in nostr i actually connected with my co-founder over in austr as well

416
00:34:18,829 --> 00:34:25,510
he happened to be here locally in austin and so i would go to local austin meetups and we would go

417
00:34:25,510 --> 00:34:30,149
to bit devs and other meetups together cool and so i kind of knew him through there i knew him

418
00:34:30,149 --> 00:34:34,109
through a lot of podcasts but ultimately i reached out to him over in austin and said hey i would love

419
00:34:34,109 --> 00:34:41,129
to i'd love to work together with you so we teamed up and as a lot of startups do you kind of pivot

420
00:34:41,129 --> 00:34:46,569
around um so he and a couple other guys were working on mutiny wallet at the time which was

421
00:34:46,569 --> 00:34:51,970
a lightning wallet that you can host in your web browser on your phone. Self-sovereign, privacy,

422
00:34:52,409 --> 00:34:56,649
lightning, which I thought was really cool. So I teamed up with them to work on that.

423
00:34:57,290 --> 00:35:04,669
But very quickly, we realized it's difficult to monetize something like a self-custodial lightning

424
00:35:04,669 --> 00:35:10,010
wallet on your phone. And there are people working on that kind of tech and I applaud them and I hope

425
00:35:10,010 --> 00:35:15,889
that they are very successful. But we decided that just wasn't quite the thing for us. But we had this

426
00:35:15,889 --> 00:35:20,629
really strong privacy technology. I had my privacy background from Apple. They had built this really

427
00:35:20,629 --> 00:35:26,549
cool thing for a privacy wallet for Bitcoin. And we started to talk to a lot of different developers

428
00:35:26,549 --> 00:35:31,589
and say, okay, what tools do you need? We have this really cool privacy platform that we can build

429
00:35:31,589 --> 00:35:36,990
and enhance. And time and time again, in these conversations, people kept saying,

430
00:35:36,990 --> 00:35:41,329
I use ChatGPT every day, and I hate the fact that I'm giving away my information to this other

431
00:35:41,329 --> 00:35:47,909
company? Can you make a private version of chat GPT? So after about 10 of these calls that we had,

432
00:35:48,049 --> 00:35:52,269
and pretty much every single one said the same thing, we said, let's build this. Nobody's

433
00:35:52,269 --> 00:35:57,889
building it, right? There were some tools out there that are kind of privacy with AI, but it's

434
00:35:57,889 --> 00:36:02,429
more like just trust us that we're not keeping track of your data, but really we could be behind

435
00:36:02,429 --> 00:36:07,649
the scenes. We said, let's build it in the way that that mutiny was built. Let's have end-to-end

436
00:36:07,649 --> 00:36:12,669
encryption. Let's have total privacy. You have your own private key. The only difference,

437
00:36:12,809 --> 00:36:17,089
instead of you having a private key that you have to write down and lock in your safe or something,

438
00:36:18,389 --> 00:36:25,950
we use confidential computing. We use hardware encryption in the cloud that does all the private

439
00:36:25,950 --> 00:36:32,470
cryptography for you. And it's a bit of a newer technology. It's kind of foreign to a lot of

440
00:36:32,470 --> 00:36:39,290
people because they're not in the space that we're in. But it really gives you this cryptographic

441
00:36:39,290 --> 00:36:44,049
guarantee that the code running on those servers is the same code that we have published on GitHub.

442
00:36:44,529 --> 00:36:49,429
So anybody can go on GitHub, they can see, okay, this is how Maple runs. And there's no spot in

443
00:36:49,429 --> 00:36:55,169
there where Maple is taking a copy of what I say to the AI and saving it anywhere. It's not making

444
00:36:55,169 --> 00:37:00,069
a duplicate anywhere that they can then sell to advertisers or they can use to train a future

445
00:37:00,069 --> 00:37:04,929
model that's not happening and then with this secure enclave and confidential computing they

446
00:37:04,929 --> 00:37:09,589
can say okay that code that is in github that is what's running on the servers i have this

447
00:37:09,589 --> 00:37:14,470
cryptographic guarantee and when you log into maple and use it there's like this little like

448
00:37:14,470 --> 00:37:18,929
check mark this little lock icon and you can click on that and you can see like all the

449
00:37:18,929 --> 00:37:23,849
attestations all verifications that show that those there's a there's a match between the code

450
00:37:23,849 --> 00:37:30,869
and we really wanted to go the full length to let people know this is this is secure this is private

451
00:37:30,869 --> 00:37:36,249
you can chat in here we're effectively pulling an ai into a room with you and closing the door

452
00:37:36,249 --> 00:37:41,249
and it's just you two we don't want to know what you're talking about um so that's that's kind of

453
00:37:41,249 --> 00:37:46,349
how i got here um and started working on maple and and yeah i mean we can talk more about it but

454
00:37:46,349 --> 00:37:53,149
that's that's where it all yeah amazing um i have been using maple almost exclusively for

455
00:37:53,149 --> 00:37:55,589
two weeks, something like that.

456
00:37:57,429 --> 00:38:00,349
It's interesting because AI is just something that

457
00:38:00,349 --> 00:38:06,810
this current suite of AI products is a better way of saying it

458
00:38:06,810 --> 00:38:12,470
has really been such an extraordinary success from a kind of user traction perspective

459
00:38:12,470 --> 00:38:17,649
that my wife and I are now actively using an AI of some form

460
00:38:17,649 --> 00:38:21,329
every single day. For example, a Google search,

461
00:38:21,329 --> 00:38:26,769
gone completely gone right you're no longer like browsing websites looking for information that you

462
00:38:26,769 --> 00:38:32,529
need you're going to an ai you're asking a specific thing and some of them are different like for

463
00:38:32,529 --> 00:38:35,589
example i had an experience recently where i was trying to figure something out and i used

464
00:38:35,589 --> 00:38:40,769
the same prompt but into five different products and i got five different answers and then you could

465
00:38:40,769 --> 00:38:46,009
bit take the best bits out of those five and whatever but i still hadn't asked the important

466
00:38:46,009 --> 00:38:51,389
the question was like, what are these guys doing with my information? Now, if the information you're

467
00:38:51,389 --> 00:38:59,369
sharing is like, okay, example from yesterday is one of my part of my vision, my self image,

468
00:38:59,369 --> 00:39:08,389
my future self is physical health. And I'd like to be in the top 10% of men my age in physical

469
00:39:08,389 --> 00:39:12,409
health. Like, what does that actually look like? Okay, well, you got to be able to sprint this

470
00:39:12,409 --> 00:39:15,729
fast, you're going to jump this high, you got to be a body mass index of this much.

471
00:39:16,009 --> 00:39:24,310
Cool. Okay. Do I care if ChatGPT has that information? Not really. But some things like

472
00:39:24,310 --> 00:39:30,649
I've been storing in Google Sheets, for example, is like very sensitive financial information that

473
00:39:30,649 --> 00:39:35,089
it's a spreadsheet. It's kind of safe, isn't it? And you've gone from having an Excel file on your

474
00:39:35,089 --> 00:39:40,889
hard drive to then in the cloud. And what if you want to de-Google yourself? That's a whole other

475
00:39:40,889 --> 00:39:45,509
conversation in itself. To then like, well, maybe you're going to start having these more financial

476
00:39:45,509 --> 00:39:49,349
conversations with an AI, you're not even going to have a spreadsheet because you don't need to run

477
00:39:49,349 --> 00:39:52,990
the formulas. You're just going to ask it. Here's the information. Tell me what the answer is and

478
00:39:52,990 --> 00:40:00,149
it'll do it. So it's a big, big subject. This, um, and just resonates a lot. It's like, okay,

479
00:40:00,149 --> 00:40:05,129
if I'm going to be using this tool every single day, who the hell keeps the information that I'm

480
00:40:05,129 --> 00:40:11,169
putting into it? And what does it mean if they do or don't, um, to, to, to ask a specific question

481
00:40:11,169 --> 00:40:17,709
though, Mark. So I, as I was using Maple, so teach me a bit more about how it's actually built,

482
00:40:17,709 --> 00:40:22,470
because it was telling me that actually the underlying infrastructure is Alibaba.

483
00:40:23,310 --> 00:40:28,649
And it is a, it wasn't called Maple. I was like, aren't you called Maple? And it's like, no.

484
00:40:29,490 --> 00:40:35,169
So how have you managed to kind of pull things together? And, and how does that enable the

485
00:40:35,169 --> 00:40:42,709
privacy. Yeah. So that's something that we want to work on for 2026 is making Maple more self-aware.

486
00:40:44,169 --> 00:40:50,229
So the way that we built it is we wanted to have the entire stack be verifiable end-to-end. And

487
00:40:50,229 --> 00:40:56,470
verifiable means you can inspect the code, you can see what's going on, but then also on the AI

488
00:40:56,470 --> 00:41:02,349
side itself, on the models. So if people aren't totally familiar with how AI works, it's really

489
00:41:02,349 --> 00:41:08,409
this thing called an LLM. It's a large language model. And they are trained by different

490
00:41:08,409 --> 00:41:12,490
organizations, different companies. So you have Meta that has trained one called Llama.

491
00:41:12,929 --> 00:41:19,490
You have OpenAI, which does their chat GPT models. And they made an open source one called GPT OSS.

492
00:41:19,849 --> 00:41:24,509
Then you have DeepSeek, which a lot of people have heard that word now, but that is a company

493
00:41:24,509 --> 00:41:31,349
out of China. And then you have Alibaba that's done some. So there's Quinn, there's Kimmy.

494
00:41:31,749 --> 00:41:33,470
Kimmy is made by a company called Moonshot.

495
00:41:34,009 --> 00:41:35,629
So you have a bunch of different ones.

496
00:41:36,249 --> 00:41:40,009
And the open models, and that's really what we use to kind of quickly answer your question.

497
00:41:40,109 --> 00:41:41,329
We're running open source models.

498
00:41:41,749 --> 00:41:44,769
So we have open source code paired with these open source models.

499
00:41:44,769 --> 00:41:52,470
So you can kind of inspect how they behave and see kind of some of the biases and how they've weighted certain data.

500
00:41:53,269 --> 00:41:59,409
And we wanted to run those to make it so that everything throughout the process could be inspected by people.

501
00:41:59,409 --> 00:42:06,169
there are still certain parts of that training that is not you're not able to inspect yet but

502
00:42:06,169 --> 00:42:10,129
we're always kind of looking at how how are these models trained and how can we find ways to make

503
00:42:10,129 --> 00:42:14,549
them more verifiable and inspect them i mean there are people working on solving that problem

504
00:42:14,549 --> 00:42:19,909
but but that's that's why you know it told you it was alibaba other people will be chatting with

505
00:42:19,909 --> 00:42:25,450
with our the llama model within our app and i'll say oh i am meta you know i belong you know to

506
00:42:25,450 --> 00:42:30,629
Facebook. So that is a bit jarring to people. And so we're working on improving that to where

507
00:42:30,629 --> 00:42:35,429
Maple has this system prompt where it knows who it is and it knows that it's using these models

508
00:42:35,429 --> 00:42:40,649
so it can better respond to people. But really that's what you're seeing is, is we are trying

509
00:42:40,649 --> 00:42:45,829
to do, we're trying to do the least amount of things possible to be in between you and this

510
00:42:45,829 --> 00:42:51,970
model. We want you to be able to have just this tool because ultimately what is the most private

511
00:42:51,970 --> 00:42:56,490
way to use AI. It's really the most private way is to run it on your local device, run it on your

512
00:42:56,490 --> 00:43:02,049
laptop, run it on your phone. But these models are so large. And to get the true power out of them,

513
00:43:02,129 --> 00:43:08,189
you have to have not only one GPU that's really large, you have to have multiple GPUs that are

514
00:43:08,189 --> 00:43:13,990
running on cloud servers that are chained together to be able to run the full model. And none of us

515
00:43:13,990 --> 00:43:17,249
have that in our house. And we wouldn't want to have that in our house because it's super expensive.

516
00:43:17,249 --> 00:43:21,829
It's extremely loud. It has high power requirements. You have to get an electrician in

517
00:43:21,970 --> 00:43:25,849
to like put new wiring into a room just for you to run that.

518
00:43:26,689 --> 00:43:28,329
And so if we run local AI,

519
00:43:28,549 --> 00:43:30,869
we're never going to get that kind of power out of the model

520
00:43:30,869 --> 00:43:32,829
that we are able to download and run on our device.

521
00:43:33,249 --> 00:43:38,490
So we're trying to pull in the privacy that you have at home

522
00:43:38,490 --> 00:43:42,470
running local AI and like bring the cloud to you into your house

523
00:43:42,470 --> 00:43:44,290
and doing that in the best way possible.

524
00:43:44,810 --> 00:43:48,290
So that's why you got that, you know, that prompt and that experience

525
00:43:48,290 --> 00:43:54,769
is that we are really just trying to bring this large server into your house and then

526
00:43:54,769 --> 00:43:57,790
just kind of get out of the way and let you talk to it from there.

527
00:43:57,790 --> 00:44:04,889
Well, and it's, oh, what a cool conversation. I didn't mind that the response was, it was

528
00:44:04,889 --> 00:44:17,104
like oh I was built by Alibaba and my name is whatever I didn mind that at all um what was what what i liked was actually learning that so okay well that interesting i don mind if it built by

529
00:44:17,104 --> 00:44:22,184
them um my then next question was like okay well what happens to the information that i put in and

530
00:44:22,184 --> 00:44:28,304
that's we can go there in a sec i guess but um shout out to mike hardcastle mike's been on the

531
00:44:28,304 --> 00:44:34,504
podcast in the past and we um we were having a conversation recently on nostra about uh you know

532
00:44:34,504 --> 00:44:41,044
building your own AI because I'm like oh you know I'd love to build it's like I really want to and

533
00:44:41,044 --> 00:44:45,604
there's a few years ago there's guys that were creators content creators that and there's even

534
00:44:45,604 --> 00:44:51,684
a book called this I think um your second brain something along those lines it's like okay I need

535
00:44:51,684 --> 00:44:59,344
a way to catch ideas I need a way to curate tasks I need a way to organize my calendar and they were

536
00:44:59,344 --> 00:45:05,184
use like a software like notion or something and they were building these these big systems where

537
00:45:05,184 --> 00:45:09,824
like you know every single highlight in a kindle would end up in you know somewhere somewhere it

538
00:45:09,824 --> 00:45:17,604
was it was just tracking all of the activity that you did on a weekly basis um i never built it and

539
00:45:17,604 --> 00:45:21,604
i wasn't disciplined enough to actually use it properly and i fell off all the different like

540
00:45:21,604 --> 00:45:28,704
processes i tried to build for myself um but with ai you could do it much more effectively it's like

541
00:45:28,704 --> 00:45:30,584
okay, well, this is the image I'm working towards.

542
00:45:30,584 --> 00:45:32,524
These are all the parameters I'm looking for.

543
00:45:32,524 --> 00:45:34,424
For example, in an investment decision,

544
00:45:34,424 --> 00:45:36,344
you have an idea, I wanna start this business,

545
00:45:36,344 --> 00:45:37,524
or I wanna build this product.

546
00:45:37,524 --> 00:45:40,784
Okay, into your AI, this is the idea.

547
00:45:40,784 --> 00:45:43,584
How does it match up to the self image I'm working towards?

548
00:45:43,584 --> 00:45:46,524
And there's just the speed of iteration

549
00:45:46,524 --> 00:45:49,044
for good idea, bad idea is now 10 times faster

550
00:45:49,044 --> 00:45:51,044
than what it used to be, for example.

551
00:45:51,044 --> 00:45:53,464
Okay, but I don't really wanna share that

552
00:45:53,464 --> 00:45:55,364
with someone that I don't know.

553
00:45:55,364 --> 00:45:58,104
And so where's that information gone?

554
00:45:58,704 --> 00:46:03,684
yeah i mean anything resonate from that then mark because it's like yeah definitely there's so many

555
00:46:03,684 --> 00:46:08,504
directions you can go in right yeah the second brain concept really resonates with me a lot

556
00:46:08,504 --> 00:46:15,744
one of my friends introduced that concept to me a little while ago and i i like it a lot and

557
00:46:15,744 --> 00:46:20,984
the piece that's missing as we come into the ai world is having that ai brain that helps you

558
00:46:20,984 --> 00:46:26,064
sift through all this data that you're collecting if you truly want to live the second brain lifestyle

559
00:46:26,064 --> 00:46:30,404
like you said every piece of data that you interact with as much as possible is being

560
00:46:30,404 --> 00:46:36,124
captured into some repository somewhere on your device and then synchronized to your devices

561
00:46:36,124 --> 00:46:41,324
somehow and who touches that data along the way as it's being synchronized that's something you're

562
00:46:41,324 --> 00:46:45,384
always wondering but then also if you want to start to get insights into it right because

563
00:46:45,384 --> 00:46:50,024
ultimately that's why you gather this data is to understand understand more about yourself

564
00:46:50,024 --> 00:46:55,784
understand how you're achieving your goals how can you set new goals to help you like see something

565
00:46:55,784 --> 00:47:00,864
beyond yourself that you didn't know that you could become. And AI has the ability to help you

566
00:47:00,864 --> 00:47:06,924
out with that. But really the AIs that are powerful enough that most people interact with

567
00:47:06,924 --> 00:47:13,804
are ChatGPT or Claude or Grok and now Gemini with Google. And it's like, okay, you spent all this

568
00:47:13,804 --> 00:47:18,724
time building up data security around this data you're collecting. And then for the last mile,

569
00:47:18,724 --> 00:47:23,624
for the part where you actually try to talk with an AI, you're just giving it all away in that last

570
00:47:23,624 --> 00:47:30,824
moment. And so we've built Maple to actually be that brain for the second brain concept where that

571
00:47:30,824 --> 00:47:35,884
AI brain, you can, right now it's like a manual process where you copy and paste stuff into Maple

572
00:47:35,884 --> 00:47:40,064
and say, okay, I'm having a chat about this right now. I want to go down this topic, go down this

573
00:47:40,064 --> 00:47:48,364
rabbit hole. But Maple also has an API on it. And so developers who want to can take their software

574
00:47:48,364 --> 00:47:52,564
and they can interact with Maple programmatically through the API.

575
00:47:53,104 --> 00:47:57,184
And we structure the API to talk the same language that OpenAI talks.

576
00:47:57,724 --> 00:48:00,704
And so if there are apps out there that know how to talk to OpenAI,

577
00:48:01,344 --> 00:48:03,244
well, with just like two lines of code,

578
00:48:03,544 --> 00:48:05,484
they can switch over to using Maple's API.

579
00:48:05,484 --> 00:48:10,544
And now all of that data that is going to an AI provider is now encrypted.

580
00:48:10,804 --> 00:48:11,444
It's private.

581
00:48:12,104 --> 00:48:14,084
It's not going to OpenAI servers anymore.

582
00:48:14,084 --> 00:48:21,044
it's going to this encrypted backend that maple is running on and is end-to-end encrypted and so

583
00:48:21,044 --> 00:48:26,884
you just get infinite better data privacy immediately but you still have these ai smarts

584
00:48:26,884 --> 00:48:32,224
you have this ai brain that's able to interact with your data awesome yeah because the the

585
00:48:32,224 --> 00:48:37,104
the economics of the business are interesting aren't they because what you're pointing out is

586
00:48:37,104 --> 00:48:42,944
that to you could build your llm in your garage and it's going to cost you a lot of money to build

587
00:48:42,944 --> 00:48:46,344
it might be a pain in the ass to actually operate and manage.

588
00:48:46,984 --> 00:48:49,904
And the results actually might not be that good

589
00:48:49,904 --> 00:48:53,164
because how much information have you actually built into it?

590
00:48:53,404 --> 00:48:57,804
Whereas the sweet spot seems to be outsourcing

591
00:48:57,804 --> 00:48:59,964
that kind of hardware side of the business,

592
00:49:00,644 --> 00:49:03,664
paying a subscription to someone like Maple.

593
00:49:04,164 --> 00:49:08,484
And that's a really interesting set of kind of economic facts

594
00:49:08,484 --> 00:49:10,024
that I think a good business case.

595
00:49:10,024 --> 00:49:32,284
And for example, a self-custodial lightning wallet, like what you mentioned, you guys with Mutiny were trying to build, but that is niche, niche, niche, niche, niche. Whereas like an everyday AI second brain that's private, different ballgame entirely in terms of like, oh, okay, well, yeah, there's a lot more people to sell that to. So how does Maple make money?

596
00:49:32,284 --> 00:49:39,784
yeah so we do monthly subscriptions that's really our bread and butter um and so we we people can

597
00:49:39,784 --> 00:49:45,864
pay monthly with credit card or we have an annual payment they can pay with bitcoin um we made

598
00:49:45,864 --> 00:49:51,804
bitcoin annual only because it's very difficult to do reoccurring subscriptions with bitcoin right

599
00:49:51,804 --> 00:49:56,724
now and we don't want to be chasing people every month and saying hey can you please renew your

600
00:49:56,724 --> 00:50:01,684
bitcoin payment can you send another one whereas credit cards you just kind of set it and then it's

601
00:50:01,684 --> 00:50:05,484
just on automatic and you can keep using maple and you don't have to think about the payment

602
00:50:05,484 --> 00:50:09,904
portion of it anymore and that's really that there's that friction right getting somebody to

603
00:50:09,904 --> 00:50:15,564
pay you money for something is a friction point and with bitcoin the way that it's designed which

604
00:50:15,564 --> 00:50:21,764
is amazing is you you have control over your payments i can't authorize a company to come

605
00:50:21,764 --> 00:50:28,044
into my bitcoin wallet and take money out of it and so that's that's by design so yeah that's

606
00:50:28,044 --> 00:50:31,324
That's really the way we've set it up is Bitcoin payments are an annual payment.

607
00:50:31,464 --> 00:50:35,624
You get a 10% discount for doing that, or you can pay a month to month credit card.

608
00:50:36,624 --> 00:50:41,384
And then at that point, we don't really have any other financial incentives.

609
00:50:41,684 --> 00:50:43,544
We don't monetize your data in some way.

610
00:50:44,464 --> 00:50:49,264
And that's kind of this world that we've lived in for the last 20 years is every single cloud

611
00:50:49,264 --> 00:50:53,824
service that we use, it's either given to us for free or it's given to us at a discount.

612
00:50:54,044 --> 00:50:56,044
We just don't realize it's a discount, right?

613
00:50:56,044 --> 00:51:15,124
Maybe we're paying a monthly subscription service for something, but what we don't realize is that that subscription price has been lowered because the company is actually taking all that data that we've sent them and finding other ways to make money, whether it's selling advertising or improving their product or selling data share agreements with governments.

614
00:51:16,124 --> 00:51:19,024
That is being monetized in another way.

615
00:51:19,024 --> 00:51:25,404
with maple we're going back to the old school way when email first came out people were selling

616
00:51:25,404 --> 00:51:30,284
email services where i would sign up i would get an email address and i would pay you five dollars

617
00:51:30,284 --> 00:51:33,844
a month ten dollars a month twenty dollars a month however much i needed to pay for you to

618
00:51:33,844 --> 00:51:38,684
run my email for me and that was it they didn't do anything else at the time they hadn't invented

619
00:51:38,684 --> 00:51:43,984
all these fancy monetization models yet and we're going back to that when you sign up for maple and

620
00:51:43,984 --> 00:51:49,864
you pay us 20 bucks a month to use the pro account. That's it. Like we give you a service.

621
00:51:49,864 --> 00:51:53,784
It's always on. You can do it on your phone. You can do it on your computer. We synchronize it

622
00:51:53,784 --> 00:52:00,324
between the devices and we don't have access to your data. So we can't monetize it. We don't even

623
00:52:00,324 --> 00:52:06,244
want to monetize it, but we can't because it's not there for us to look at. So that's, that's

624
00:52:06,244 --> 00:52:11,044
the business model for Maple. We have personal accounts you can do. We have like the pro account.

625
00:52:11,044 --> 00:52:14,144
We have a max account for people who just need a lot more usage.

626
00:52:14,724 --> 00:52:21,544
And then we have a team account for small businesses, working professionals who have people that they want to work with together.

627
00:52:22,124 --> 00:52:24,324
So we have quite a few business accounts on there.

628
00:52:24,704 --> 00:52:29,764
These are people who are at legal offices, lawyers or accountants, financial professionals.

629
00:52:30,364 --> 00:52:33,004
We have therapists, medical professionals who are using it.

630
00:52:33,484 --> 00:52:38,624
People who have a lot of really confidential information that they deal with in the real world.

631
00:52:38,624 --> 00:52:42,424
and they simply cannot upload it to chat GPT.

632
00:52:42,744 --> 00:52:46,604
It would break their agreements with their clients.

633
00:52:47,264 --> 00:52:49,284
And so we provide them a tool that allows them

634
00:52:49,284 --> 00:52:52,164
to maintain that confidentiality with their client,

635
00:52:52,444 --> 00:52:56,144
but also get the wonderful technology

636
00:52:56,144 --> 00:52:57,584
and the productivity that can come

637
00:52:57,584 --> 00:52:59,004
from using something like AI.

638
00:53:00,884 --> 00:53:02,884
Mark, we're bumping up on it now.

639
00:53:02,964 --> 00:53:04,184
So I've got one more question for you.

640
00:53:04,244 --> 00:53:05,604
And this is a truly selfish one,

641
00:53:05,664 --> 00:53:06,984
just as a Maple user.

642
00:53:06,984 --> 00:53:16,004
is so when i've got my history of conversations is are each conversation into interplaying with

643
00:53:16,004 --> 00:53:20,904
each other so does maple understand if i start a new conversation everything else i've said to

644
00:53:20,904 --> 00:53:26,864
previous conversations are added into the new one if that makes sense or not because it's

645
00:53:26,864 --> 00:53:33,564
interesting how they build on each other yeah at the time no um each each one is independent of

646
00:53:33,564 --> 00:53:43,004
itself. That is one of our big main focus points right now of 2026 is we want to bring a stronger

647
00:53:43,004 --> 00:53:48,544
sense of memory into Maple. And so there will start to be this interplay between them. We're

648
00:53:48,544 --> 00:53:55,404
trying to do it in a way that kind of preserves what people expect. Some people want to have an

649
00:53:55,404 --> 00:54:00,304
island. Each chat is its own thing and doesn't know about the other. Other people want to have

650
00:54:00,304 --> 00:54:04,984
them all know about each other so we are going to start building building different concepts within

651
00:54:04,984 --> 00:54:08,584
the app where you can say okay i'm chatting here and they're all going to know about each other

652
00:54:08,584 --> 00:54:13,184
or this is one that i just want to be totally by itself i don't want it to know about anything else

653
00:54:13,184 --> 00:54:17,804
um we're starting to play with that but we are going to we're bringing memory into maple and

654
00:54:17,804 --> 00:54:22,824
it's going to become even even smarter and more intelligent about who you are and you don't have

655
00:54:22,824 --> 00:54:28,904
to start from zero start from scratch every single time cool yeah it just you notice how different

656
00:54:28,904 --> 00:54:32,744
products behave differently and that was just something that I've noticed with some of the

657
00:54:32,744 --> 00:54:38,584
others that I've used it does straight away and said well actually is that useful so in some ways

658
00:54:38,584 --> 00:54:43,504
it's just if I know how it works I can use it how it prefers if that makes sense so I'm actually

659
00:54:43,504 --> 00:54:49,684
agnostic as to which I prefer I think well Mark listen so an hour has gone by it's been awesome

660
00:54:49,684 --> 00:54:54,344
to to speak with you and thank you for sharing everything about your journey and I'm I'm very

661
00:54:54,344 --> 00:55:02,064
excited for you i think maple's it's it's solving a problem that's very obvious one but also like i

662
00:55:02,064 --> 00:55:08,624
don't see anyone else doing it so in the the current ai hype cycle like what a brilliant

663
00:55:08,624 --> 00:55:14,704
space to be batting in because it's like well this is our very very clear proposition and please sign

664
00:55:14,704 --> 00:55:20,024
up which i've done and i've loved it so well done on the progress and um is there anything you'd like

665
00:55:20,024 --> 00:55:24,324
to close out with that you haven't covered or equally how can people reach out if they want

666
00:55:24,324 --> 00:55:29,924
to get in touch? Sure. Well, I have to say the website, you know, go to try maple.ai, go, go

667
00:55:29,924 --> 00:55:33,264
sign up for a free account. You don't have to pay to use it. You can sign up for free and use it

668
00:55:33,264 --> 00:55:38,784
every single day if you want to. Um, but, uh, I'll kind of bookend the conversation back to digital

669
00:55:38,784 --> 00:55:44,684
censorship, um, real briefly. Um, I, I wrote a long form piece about this. Uh, I call it

670
00:55:44,684 --> 00:55:51,104
subconscious censorship, but what we are doing as we talk to chat GPT and some of these other

671
00:55:51,104 --> 00:55:55,804
products is we're creating this vulnerability for ourselves where we're giving them all this

672
00:55:55,804 --> 00:56:01,284
really rich information about us. And it's not just like things that we are interested in.

673
00:56:01,744 --> 00:56:05,344
You know, that's how the old internet was. We would just say, oh, I like these movies. I like

674
00:56:05,344 --> 00:56:11,624
this music. Now we are giving them over our entire thought process. This is how I, Mark,

675
00:56:11,904 --> 00:56:18,244
think in my daily life and how I reason through things. And we're creating this ability for other

676
00:56:18,244 --> 00:56:26,304
companies to insert things into the the response we get from the ai and they could insert things or

677
00:56:26,304 --> 00:56:31,464
they could remove things but they start to learn the way that we think and so they can start to

678
00:56:31,464 --> 00:56:37,824
kind of move us in a certain direction if you will nudge us in a certain direction through the output

679
00:56:37,824 --> 00:56:42,124
that we get from the ai and we won't really be able to perceive it and i'm not saying that they're

680
00:56:42,124 --> 00:56:46,344
doing this but this is a very real vulnerability that we're kind of setting ourselves up for

681
00:56:46,344 --> 00:56:52,604
and maple is trying to to solve for this as well aside from just giving people privacy we want to

682
00:56:52,604 --> 00:56:58,004
give people a room where they are free to think they can chat with an ai and know that nobody is

683
00:56:58,004 --> 00:57:04,924
tampering with with the output that i'm getting um it's just me and i'm able to to kind of be free

684
00:57:04,924 --> 00:57:09,624
to to talk how i want to and to reason how i want to and really just kind of think the way that i

685
00:57:09,624 --> 00:57:15,064
think um so if you would love to check it out it's called the free thought manifesto the website is

686
00:57:15,064 --> 00:57:20,864
aiwithconfidence.org. That's where I'm starting to post some long form writings there. It's also

687
00:57:20,864 --> 00:57:28,344
on Nostra. You can just go to my Nostra account, marks at primal.net. And you can see I posted

688
00:57:28,344 --> 00:57:33,464
there as a long form article on Nostra as well. But yeah, follow me on X at Mark Suman,

689
00:57:33,924 --> 00:57:40,564
marks at primal.net, and then go check out trimaple.ai. Awesome. Well, thank you so much

690
00:57:40,564 --> 00:57:46,184
for joining today a closing thought that just resonates so strongly as you talk through the

691
00:57:46,184 --> 00:57:51,084
the point of privacy just going back to what you mentioned about the fact that you know you wake up

692
00:57:51,084 --> 00:57:55,064
you brush your teeth the curtains are still closed you walk downstairs you might open the

693
00:57:55,064 --> 00:58:00,524
the the blind at the backyard so you've got your backyard open eventually you've like had a coffee

694
00:58:00,524 --> 00:58:04,924
and you got the kids dressed you know and you've walked out the front door yeah that is a private

695
00:58:04,924 --> 00:58:10,504
start to your day that the world doesn't need to see that and you haven't shown it to anyone so

696
00:58:10,504 --> 00:58:18,124
how you behave digitally is is just the same in many ways it's like an idea which then is a word

697
00:58:18,124 --> 00:58:23,804
that's then an action and it's this whole concept of like the freedom of speech being on a spectrum

698
00:58:23,804 --> 00:58:28,264
essentially it's like okay well on the one end it's like oh this is police we've got to police

699
00:58:28,264 --> 00:58:32,344
this hate speech it's like well you either believe in letting people say what they want and thinking

700
00:58:32,344 --> 00:58:39,504
what they want or you don't and so the the the ability to have an ai tool that gives you privacy

701
00:58:39,504 --> 00:58:44,764
incredibly important thing in this world. So I really wish you all the very best building that.

702
00:58:44,764 --> 00:58:49,224
And thank you for your time today, Mark. Thank you. I appreciate it. Nice chatting.

703
00:58:50,004 --> 00:58:50,704
Thank you.