Using AI to Build Deeper Relationships: The Future of Social Tech with Founder Stelio Ropokis

Stelio: What we've learned there also is that WhatsApp is a great platform for conversational AI experiences and we know quite a lot of other founders building on WhatsApp. A lot of different use cases like a fitness coach or one that I thought was a really unique, it's called gifted and you can send a AI bot to a friend to figure out what you should get them for their birthday.

Stelio: So you're like this is Arthur, he's British and he loves coffee. Lemme just give you some data to get it started and then the AI will contact you on WhatsApp and be like, Hey, one of your friends is gonna buy you a birthday gift. Let's have a conversation about what you like. So it's opening like conversation around WhatsApp is opening all these really cool new use cases

Arthur: It's so great to have you on, you and I, Matt you have this incredible energy. Passion for what you do, where you're at in the world, ai and had the most amazing conversation about your startup vibe. Would love for you to give introduction to yourself.

Stelio: Yes, I'm [00:01:00] Selio. I am the co-founder of Vibe Social. We call it Vibe About Social, and basically we're a social AI startup and we build these playful conversational AI products to support human connection, to deepen human connection. So that's a bit about the startup and maybe to tell you a little bit about my background and my story.

Stelio: I am a little bit bicultural and I grew up in different places, so I'm Greek American and Mexican. I was actually born in California, moved around a lot as as a child and always was really interested in identity and connection from all those moves, from always being in like new schools and.

Stelio: I ended up studying at Stanford, something called Symbolic Systems, which is a cognitive science major, like some kind of intersection of the cognitive science and artificial intelligence. So that's where I got started with technology. And I ended up joining Facebook when I was [00:02:00] 19 years old.

Stelio: So I started interning at Facebook. I was always really. Motivated by the mission to connect people. Facebook's original mission was like, connect the world. And, but at the same time, I think what really stood out to me is what is the operationalization of connection? Like how do you measure connection?

Stelio: How should you measure connection between people and Facebook, was measuring it at the time as okay. Like people are like adding each other as friends at Facebook and maybe like spending a lot of time on Facebook. But is that actually the best way to measure connection between people?

Stelio: I think that's why today you hear a lot more people talking about meaningful connection versus connection to disambiguate the different types of connection and how they actually bring energy into our life. So I was at Facebook, got really interested in like social technology and thinking a lot about what are the metrics that, that we're supporting in different social technologies.

Stelio: I. Then took [00:03:00] a, so I worked on a few different products at Facebook and I can tell you more about that later. I had always also been really interested in how music connects people and so I actually went and joined Spotify as one of, probably, I think I was their youngest product manager at the time.

Stelio: So really, and. Join because I had this interesting vision around like how we can use music to connect people and the feeling that Spotify should be a little bit more social. Not that it should be a social media product, but that we can actually integrate more social features into the Spotify product.

Stelio: So I joined Spotify. It was like looking at a few different products like the. Concert recommendations for groups of friends or like families friend activity feed where you were sharing like you, you can actually auto share like what you're listening to on Spotify. And it's one of the favorite features of young people on Spotify and continued down that, that path for a while.

Stelio: But [00:04:00] Spotify at the time was not in a place to build more social features. They're really scared of becoming a social media product and. So I ended up leaving Spotify and starting Vibe Social. I'd always wanted to be a founder. It was just a matter of time. I told myself, okay, I'll go learn a bit like working at Facebook and Spotify and started vibe because I've always wanted to work on meaningful connection and I think AI has a really fascinating place in it, in the future.

Arthur: Talk to us about what vibe looks like to a user.

Stelio: Yeah, great question. So one of the the product that we're focusing on right now is actually a playful AI for daily reflection. And this is actually a social product, so sometimes people think of reflection and journaling as this kind of isolated experience that you do by yourself and.

Stelio: We're saying like, actually that's not it. Reflection is a social experience and actually it's a great way [00:05:00] to build meaningful connection between people. So the product that we've been testing right now is actually this playful AI that integrates into your WhatsApp. So it sends you a question every single day.

Stelio: It's a reflection question. It's. Super easy to answer. It's multiple choice. And then you can also be put in group chats with the AI to share your reflections between multiple people. So there's like some, it's like maybe like families that are on there. It's coworkers, there's friend groups like, more like intimate friend groups and everyone is doing this daily reflection question and then sharing the reflections with their friends.

Stelio: With the friends or like their close connections, right? So that's the product we've been testing. It's a really great like proof of concept of this idea of how does AI integrate, how can AI integrate into our conversations and our social life? And just to take a second to, to position it.

Stelio: What's really interesting you think about the arc of social tech, right? [00:06:00] In the beginning it was , we were really used to social media, everything is broadcasted online. People were starting with the, text post on Facebook, and then it evolved into the photos and the videos and like everything was broadcasted everywhere, right?

Stelio: Like everyone was broadcasting. Now people are over that. There's influencers that do the broadcasting, but most socializing, if you think about it, has moved in back into like smaller, more curated, intimate groups, right? Like the WhatsApp group chat, like actually WhatsApp group chat is one of the primary ways people socialize today.

Arthur: So we thought, what's a really interesting way to actually integrate this AI technology into the places that people are socializing today? The WhatsApp group chat. So that was the idea behind the proof of concept that we're building the playful AI for daily reflection.

There's so much to think about in that space. You've got, how do you build, let's say, one-on-one human connection to be more, maybe more far and more more of a kind of, yeah. How you build connection between people, but then you've also got the self-reflection, which is learning more [00:07:00] about yourself.

Arthur: How surely the idea of self-reflection has been a big deal for you. Has that, have you had a relationship with this for a while? Talk to us about that.

Stelio: Yes. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot to say here. I think a little bit of what I was saying before, there's, my background made me really made me like motivated to think a lot about identity and self-reflection. I. I grew up bicultural, I grew up across different countries. I was always moving.

Stelio: I was like discovering my sexuality. There's all these things. I was like, like who? Who am I? Culturally, who am I sexually? Who am I constantly asking myself all these questions. I was always really interested in identity and, this is where the maybe like self-reflection motivation comes from and also really interested in like authenticity.

Stelio: Like how do you show up? Authentically. People ask, oh, you like, are you more this or that? Are you more Greek or American? Are you this and that? I think we're quite like, actually like dynamic [00:08:00] beings. And that's the place like self-reflection has, is to reflect on who am I? It doesn't mean that like it's not gonna change over time, but there's a lot that you can be gained from just like reflecting on the world, reflecting on your identity and your place in it.

Stelio: Self-reflection, identity, self understanding has always been really like close to my heart. And something that I've been thinking about for, two decades. And I think it also has a really important place in meaningful connection. I think like sometimes people maybe don't see the connection there, so obviously, but to me, self understanding is actually the foundation.

Stelio: Of meaningful connection because what is connection? Connection is a lot about being, feeling seen, being seen, feeling cared for. And in order to do that, like you need to be able to have something to be seen, right? So you have to put your identity out there.

Stelio: You have to be vulnerable and reflective in order to. Really [00:09:00] feel seen by someone. Because if you're putting, just your Instagram broadcast page out there, it's harder for you to feel seen. 'cause is that really the intimate parts of you that will lead to meaningful connection or is it something else?

Arthur: super interesting because you've got two ideas that are related there. One is one's relationship with themselves, and then the other is one's relationship with other people. And what you've alluded to is, unless if you can have a really strong relationship with yourself, you are able to have real connection,

Stelio: Yes. And expand on this a bit more because okay. There's actually a really, one of the tests that we did really early on was in dating. So we thought. Okay. Ai, like broadly like AI for a meaningful connection. How do we use AI to facilitate connection between humans? And we're like, oh, we can build like an AI matchmaker, right?

Stelio: And one of the core hypotheses there was actually [00:10:00] that okay, one of the. One of the core things we were thinking about is, okay, how do you build an AI match? What do you, what are you matching on? First of all what is the data that you're using to , draw predictions about compatibility between people, right?

Stelio: You need some kind of, you, you need some kind of data points. Should you be using their pictures only? Should you be using short prompts? Should you build a psychological profile of them? So what we did, my, my hypothesis was. Hey, actually, people are not considering their values enough in this compatibility prediction system, right?

Stelio: Like people are just like completely disregarding who is this person? Deep down, who what are their values and how do we match people based on their values? So we we actually went, we did this fun test. We went to UCL. We had 200 people on the street. We stopped 200 people on the street and just asked them , Hey, can you fill out this?

Stelio: I was like, I'm PhD student working on [00:11:00] social compatibility.

Arthur: Did they say to you, we've just talked to someone like you. Sorry, I've gotta go.

Stelio: yeah, exactly. A lot of people did that, but a lot of people stopped and they were like, okay, really curious. Oh, can you fill out this this survey, a few questions and we'll try to match you with something based on this algorithm that we're testing people did it. And there was like this 20 question survey covered I have this framework for compatibility, which is emotional, intellectual values, personality, and sexual compatibility.

Stelio: So we were. Covering these different dimensions. And what was really interesting learning from that test was that people actually struggle to understand themselves and articulate their identity. So there was a very, there was one question in there. It was the most important question. It was a question about people's values.

Stelio: And it was , can you select your values from this list? Or can you tell us like what your values are? And I would say 75 or like 80% of the people were like, I've never thought about. What my values are. But actually now that you ask this, [00:12:00] I find it really interesting and useful because I can then situate what I'm looking for in a better way.

Stelio: Because I'm , okay I really value playfulness. I really value loyalty. I really value authenticity. What, whatever it is that you value. So one of the learnings there was actually you need to date yourself first. That's kind of the easiest way I would put it sometimes in, in dating, maybe you've heard this from other people, like you, did, you need to date yourself first.

Stelio: You need to like under understand yourself. Who am I, what, and I what do I want? What are the important social needs that I need to be met, that I need met? Yeah. And then you date other people because if you have and you can also learn about these things through dating other people, and that's what a lot of people do.

Stelio: Maybe it's just a bit more like high friction. But this was a, like a really interesting learning. This idea of actually dating yourself first, understanding yourself first in order to , be able to show up to meaningfully connect with others.

Arthur: . And that's something your, how would you say your product focuses. [00:13:00] On, because partly it's self reflection and partly it's group dynamic.

Stelio: Yeah, , what we've been trying to do with the WhatsApp test is actually combining the connection aspect with the self understanding aspect because self understanding and self-reflection. It's not something that needs to be done in isolation, right? It's actually a great way to build connection between people, make people feel seen is by combining the two aspects of like self-reflection and connection, meaningful conversation, right?

Stelio: So that, that's why Vibe has these two aspects of the. The personal chat where you're answering your question in the group chat, where you're sharing the answers to your question in order to drive meaningful kind of intimate conversations. With people.

Arthur: Because one thing we talked about briefly was just this concept of people wanting to do certain lists, like Grateful List or. Are, having a reflection there, but they stop after a certain [00:14:00] point. And so you take the view that if it's social, people do more of it and then they benefit more.

Stelio: Yes. This, I take the view, I think there's a lot of different learnings that we can have from Social Tech about. A lot of research people have done. I think it, I'm trying to remember like the actual metric, but it is something if you have like a few friends using something you're 10 times more likely to re retain on it long term, like some kind of product.

Stelio: So it's really hard to build isolated, one-on-one products, especially if you want, especially if the product's meant to be like a long term. Engaging product. So we thought, it's actually a really great opportunity to like make this a social product because self-reflection, self understanding can be a social experience, and that's what's really resonated with people is because they're not only understanding themselves, but they're helping others understand themselves [00:15:00] and having meaningful conversation on top of it based on those discussions.

Arthur: Super fascinating. I sat in on an AA meeting with a friend who was on that program, and it's been very successful for them. One thing that was really fascinating was, which is related to what you encourage people to do, which is share stories and share reflections. And and also one thing that's encouraged in that environment is to have this grateful list.

Arthur: And I noticed that they do that in a group environment and they it, they've been doing it for quite a while now, it clearly works having that sense of community behind doing something good and a bit of the accountability as well.

Stelio: Yes. Yeah, I think accountability is a big aspect. I think what we hear a lot is also just like this, like people's need for vulnerable connection I think is very clear where sometimes we, we get people that are . Oh yeah. Like I asked my boyfriend, to be honest, like he, he [00:16:00] never would do something like this.

Stelio: He like hates social apps and he hates all these things, but he really enjoy, he answers his question every single day. And and it's this it's really interesting when you see this, there's really this underlying need. For connection. And if you're able to create an environment where people feel safe and they feel that, okay, I, I can engage with someone in a safe way, like in the WhatsApp group chat and be open and be authentic, then it can create this kind of magical moment.

Arthur: Really interesting because, there's certain friendships that one leads into more, let's say, casual conversations that aren't particularly deep. Environments can lead and change that. You've talked a bit about how AI can give a kind of insight into which interactions we have with certain people and where the gaps are.

Arthur: So do we talk about. How someone is act how they actually are. Do we not cover that? What areas do we know about them? How much of the conversation is about us versus them in a conversation? So data on our interactions and [00:17:00] something you were really passionate about was how we improve our connection with someone.

Arthur: And it's interesting you talking about those different pockets of compatibility. Do you see do you want to have. Which leads me on to my next question, which is, down the line, what do you see your product looking and how would it work? But there, there seems to be, certainly from my experience with chat, GBT, an amazing capability to analyze data and just give you really interesting insights.

Arthur: Do, do, what's your take on that. And then I'd love to hear about where you want to take your product.

Stelio: Yeah. Yeah. Th this is another thing that we're really interested in testing and understanding more about. So the insights, like what, how do we use AI to provide valuable abstractions of the questions that you're answering, right? So we started with this like weekly insights. So when people answer seven days of questions they start getting these like little insights cards in WhatsApp and.[00:18:00]

Stelio: What we're working on now is actually much more comprehensive kind of insights and identity rep representation. So one of the biggest challenges with understanding someone intimately and building and a representation of their identity is you need a lot of data points, right?

Stelio: And so that's why we're like, okay, we can help people build, we can help people build some kind of. Visualization of their identity, insights on their identity, but do it in a really fun way by asking this kind of like low friction daily question. And now we have a lot of these people that are on beta that have answered, hundreds of questions.

Stelio: And the question now is okay, how do we take these questions and. Build a beautiful representation of their values the places maybe their strengths and weaknesses, abstracting all the answers that they have across these situational questions. So really interested in doing that.

Stelio: That's the next, we're actually working on it right now, this identity representation. And that will be, a really crucial [00:19:00] part to using AI as a tool for. Having a conversation about your identity to be able to articulate it, understand it better, because it I, we don't want to I think like people are they don't react so well to, to this idea of okay, here's you answered your questions, here's who you are.

Stelio: Like they, I has told you who you are. We want that second piece, the insights piece to be a conversation. Just as it would be if you're speaking with a human, you're like, Hey, I'm sensing this pattern, across your

Arthur: Yeah.

Stelio: Arthur, does that resonate? Do you sense that pattern as well?

Stelio: And then it being, or you're like, oh no, like I, I really don't think that's correct. Oh, but the other one, the pattern you called out, that one I definitely sense, making it a conversation. One, the one thing that I, when I was at Spotify, I thought a lot about implicit versus explicit signal is what we called it, right?

Stelio: So we at Spotify we're trying to , understand people's taste. We're working on understanding people's taste in music podcast and audiobook, which is the last product that I, I worked [00:20:00] on and launched at Spotify. And really there's this interesting balance always between implicit versus explicit signal.

Stelio: What I mean by implicit signal is maybe I'm just taking all the interactions that you've had on Spotify app. You click this button, you did this, you scrolled here, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna predict this person's taste from that versus an explicit signal, which is, Hey, Arthur is there a genre that you really like?

Stelio: What's the last song that made you cry? What's the last book that you read? This is Explicit Signal. I'm the system is having a conversation with you about whatever the, abstraction is that we're trying to get, which in Spotify's case was taste. In our case it's your identity and like your behavioral patterns, your psychological patterns.

Stelio: So we want to always be balancing that implicit versus like explicit signal.

Arthur: . And many challenges there, how do you make it entertaining for people? How do you actually get 'em to come back? How do you fit in people's lives? And integrating you, integrating with WhatsApp is just yeah, a very [00:21:00] clever mood because that's where people live these days.

Stelio: People do love WhatsApp. That's, that is a big learning. And what we've learned there also is that like WhatsApp is a great platform for conversational AI experiences and we know quite a lot of other founders building on WhatsApp. A lot of different use cases like, a fitness coach or one that I thought was really unique.

Stelio: It's called gifted. And you can send a AI bot to a friend to figure out what you should get them for their birthday. So you're like, oh, this is Arthur. He's British and he loves coffee. Lemme just give you some data to get it started. And then the AI will contact you on WhatsApp and be like, Hey, like one of your friends is gonna buy your birthday gift.

Stelio: Let's have a conversation about what you like. So it's opening like conversational around WhatsApp is opening all these like really cool new use cases that we're, you we're seeing all these new proof of concepts to show that it's no longer, the last 10 years was WhatsApp for customer service, right?

Stelio: Like everyone's building these deterministic kind of customer [00:22:00] service bots in WhatsApp. And now AI has advanced so much that we've opened the gates to these, really cool unique conversational, advanced conversational AI experiences in WhatsApp that are targeting a much broader range of use cases that are not just customer service, but we're doing self-reflection, we're doing fitness, we're doing therapy, we're doing birthdays, a million different things.

Stelio: I think we're gonna see a lot more of it

Arthur: So the insiders, which is, what you are, you understand where, what tech technology can deliver us now and what's actually being delivered, right? And the gap with that. So that information gap's quite fascinating. And then the, me, often it's not clear to, to outsiders on what founders want to be building and what they envision their product to look like.

Arthur: You hear stories of people failing to raise money because investors didn't, they thought they were going for two, two niche market. And actually that, the founder had this huge vision. How would you how [00:23:00] would you explain where you want to go with this?

Stelio: Yeah. Yeah. So for us, it is always been about like building AI that supports meaningful connection and so in our pitch actually, where I had to do this pitch earlier last year. And I went up there and I was like, AI will cure loneliness. It has the potential to cure loneliness, but maybe not in the way you would expect, right?

Stelio: A AI is not meant to be a replacement for human connection. It's meant to be the facilitator of human to human connection. And that's what I mean by keep saying AI will integrate into our social lives not to be your AI girlfriend or your AI friend. Like I don't believe in that future.

Stelio: But I do believe in a future where AI will be integrated to support us. 'cause it's can be so good at abstracting patterns and like connecting the dots and always being there to just support us to be like, oh, you moved to a new city. I understand Arthur, I understand st, I understand [00:24:00] all these people.

Stelio: Oh, like they should go to this event together. It can make those connections if it's integrated in the right way into our social lives. And if it's designed. For meaningful connection and connecting humans, because that's a big distinction as well. There are other people out there building products that are not designed for human to human connection.

Stelio: They're designed to replace human connection, the we will see what the future holds. I hope it won't go that way where we're replacing human connection, but. High level that's the future that I see. It's AI as a facilitator of human connection. What that could look like more practically is, there's a lot of different use cases here to, to me, like the core of it is you need an understanding of people's identity.

Stelio: You need an understanding of people's values and like personality, emotional profile in order to enable all these future AI use cases because. If you can't understand people deeply, you don't have a sense of them, it's really hard to support [00:25:00] them in these social use cases, right?

Stelio: Where it's oh, let me like match you to a friend in the new city that you moved to, or let me, book you a restaurant reservation for you and your friends. You need to be able to understand people's identity and their social context in order to build use cases on top of that. So the, that to me is always the first piece why we working on, why we're working on self-reflection is 'cause once you understand their identity and like their social identity, if you wanna say then you can build AI and design it in a way that supports them towards their goals.

Stelio: So towards their like social goals. 

Arthur: It is meant to have an incredible influence on your standard of living and how happy you are if you are a member of a community, a club could be bowling. There are all sorts of studies that show, show fascinating data about just how much being having a physical human connection with people does, given that it's logistically bureaucratic to sort plans, do you think that's an avenue that you want to go down in making it [00:26:00] easy for people to make plans?

Stelio: I like, to me the highest form of like meaningful, Plato's form of meaningful connection is in person, great conversations or activities. You're in person with people. Having a conversation, doing an activity together, that to me is the highest form of meaningful connection.

Stelio: And I always want, that should be the north star of AI supporting people toward to enable more of that. So I actually don't, I don't think it should be , just digital. We're starting with conversation and WhatsApp groups, but that is the stepping stone towards helping people have more in-person meaningful connection, meaningful conversation.

Stelio: So I believe that, yes. Planning the, maybe it's not exactly what, maybe it's not gonna look like what you might imagine. Because there's also this kind of, always this balance between proactivity and reactivity. This is the framework that I use, , it could be a very specific use case where you were like, Hey, [00:27:00] I I wanna have a dinner with Arthur in the next two weeks.

Stelio: Okay. We're in a WhatsApp group chat. We invite like the different AI com agents and we're like the London Reservations agent and the London Conde Nast agent and the, like all these like London transfer agent and please, organize a dinner for us based on what we like and our budgets and everything.

Stelio: So you have to have the data sharing piece of who is Lio? Who is Arthur, and what are their preferences? And then you need all the context engines that the AI agents that can help support you towards that. It's a non-trivial product to build. I don't think it will necessarily be one product as much as the, integrated infrastructure across multiple products.

Stelio: So that's where I see that going. I do think AI will support us in this in the future. It's just it might not look like what we might expect today. 

Arthur: Let's talk about your journey with building something. One thing I want to touch on is, you've, you clearly work super hard, got so much passion for. [00:28:00] The things that you've been doing, and there's a really clear journey. So as to how you've got to where you are now on that journey, you've also clearly met and been exposed to interesting cultures.

Arthur: And some people to learn so much from. Talked to us about, things that you've seen brilliant brilliant people do. That you think sets them up to being happy and things working out well for them.

Stelio: A very simple mantra that I follow is is follow your energy. So I think notice what is energizing you, not energizing you, and, follow the places that you're feeling excited you're feeling energized, you're feeling curious. That will lead you down a really compelling pathway, in my opinion.

Stelio: So that's something that I always keep in mind. I think also just I, you need to follow your energy, but also manage your energy. I think sometimes people don't realize like how [00:29:00]important it is to. Take care of yourself and, be able to be in a state where you're able to think critically, right?

Stelio: If you're like extremely tired and like you haven't had any exercise in months and you're not eating well, this is not gonna support clear thinking and like strategic thinking and like putting together like a great useful vision for the future. So in, in my opinion follow your energy and manage your energy.

Stelio: I think I really, in terms of like particular people I don't know if you, you wanted about particular people that I follow? I don't know. I think there's a really great there, there's quite a lot of like wellness. Startups popping up even in the founder space. I actually have a friend from Stanford.

Stelio: Her name is Katie Ksh and she's building this startup called Loom, and it's all about like, how do manage your energy and do wellness. Even as a founder, like I, I really appreciate her, [00:30:00] the ethos behind her work and her startup, which is all about yes, like you, you can benefit from making sure that you're doing exercise, like from having a coach from sleeping well.

Stelio: Like these are all ways to build capacity towards getting more work done. And being more productive in the longer term, right? It's a long term game. It's not okay, and sometimes you need to sprint. Like sometimes you need to be like look, we need to get this done in the next three days.

Stelio: And like all hands on deck. But you always need to be thinking about like the long term kind of management of your energy.

Arthur: Have there been moments you spring from learning about something you, maybe it's about yourself or the external world where you spring off that and it and maybe it could be related to confidence or finding a passion. Can you think of any of those moments where you've come out thinking, wow, oh let's do this. Or a conversation you heard in a cafe that you just, you took a lot of meaning from that, and it's empowered you.

Stelio: . Yes, [00:31:00] this is really one story I will tell is actually. I, so I joined Entrepreneur First, which is this London-based incubator accelerator program. And one thing that I learned about myself is that I'm quite a mission-driven founder, mission-driven person I like came into.

Stelio: Entrepr entrepreneurs being like, look, I wanna work on AI for meaningful connection. And I stuck to that the entire program. And obviously I'm still working on that today. And there's a lot of people that are not like that, right? There's a lot of people that come in and they're like, yeah, I don't know.

Stelio: I just, I can do I saw people pivot like some crazy directions, like I'm doing legal tech and then I'm doing farming, and then I'm doing like air conditioner optimization, and you're like, okay. I, it's hard for me to find the, the pattern here. But yeah, I guess one thing that, that I learned through that, about, about myself is that I am a very, headstrong person in terms of the mission that I wanna work on. And that's actually [00:32:00] really important and useful for founders because if you're just doing random stuff all the time, not that they're doing random stuff, but if you're like, if you don't have that like thread now you're pushing towards some kind of vision.

Stelio: Maybe you don't know the exact solution yet. And and maybe we don't know exactly what it's gonna look like, but you have the scope that you wanna work on and you have a vision for that scope and how it might look in the future. That's really important. So that's one observation, right?

Stelio: I think.

Arthur: There's a lot of coming back here to to working out what you're once really connected to and that, you have to kinda understand yourself to some degree to. Be able to do that. And then for you, that gives you a big drive. Is there something a bit unusual that you do that just gets you feeling a, like a champion

Stelio: Unusual.

Arthur: maybe, maybe it is doing something, it's like a unusual daily routine, or,

Stelio: Yes.

Arthur: [00:33:00] Or is it for you purely about doing the kind of the simple things, sleeping well getting that foundation right.

Stelio: The simple things are important unusual, there's some things that I do maybe I don't know how unusual they are. Like, I love cold exposure. So I've been doing this every day for years where I'll turn the shower to fully cold, like freezing for the last two minutes.

Stelio: Just 'cause I think like in the morning sometimes it just gives me a little jolt of energy and I can think clearer. So that's one thing I don't know how unusual it is today. Maybe slightly unusual, but I know cold exposure is getting a lot a lot more popular.

Stelio: I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I, it's hard to know what's unusual 'cause you're like, I do this every, I do this all the time. So

Arthur: yeah.

Stelio: to me it's not unusual.

Arthur: Was telling me on the weekend and they almo, they were quite reluctant to share that, but they do the WIM H method,

Stelio: ah, really?

Arthur: and they were quite reluctant initially and and then talked about how impactful it's been for them.

Stelio: Maybe this is also unusual. I like to read a lot of [00:34:00] physics related books before bed. I dunno why. So a lot of Stephen Hawking, like a brief history of time or right now I was reading like physics, this old book that I had, like Physics for future presidents.

Stelio: And I just like math or physics related books before bed really helped me with my routine.

Arthur: I love that. So we're gonna now move into the quickfire questions.

Arthur: We touched on the cold water giving you joy. What give us and then the physics the physics works. Give us one more 

Arthur: an unusual thing that gives you joy.

Stelio: An unusual thing that gives me joy. I guess Okay. I'm also obsessed with croissants. I don't think that's unusual. I think a lot of people are, I know how unusual it is, but the level of obsession is unusual because there, there was a point of my life where I was eating three croissants a day. And one of my friends used to call me Bakery Boy because I was obsessed with croissant, just plain croissants.

Stelio: They don't have to be [00:35:00] chocolate, just a plain croissant. Now I could , to me, now maximum one croissant per day. Hopefully not one, hopefully I can get through the day without eating a croissant. But it is hard. And that's also why I have to like, compensate with so much cardio.

Stelio: Otherwise, I just can't be eating a croissant every single day.

Arthur: Have you learned how to make a sal?

Stelio: I've never made a croissant, but that sounds like a really

Arthur: Maybe that's chapter well, chapter nine of your journey in the SAL world.

Stelio: it. It is, yes. I, it seems like a lot of work, but and I'm very particular with the croissants, we're not trying to eat some low quality croissants.

Stelio: No. We need some flaky toasted, I.

Arthur: And where's the best concert you've ever had?

Stelio: Ooh. The best croissant. I think to me, one of the, obviously like in Paris, I don't even know where, but Paris has the best croissants in London. Jolene is really good. In Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, I would say the Wolf Bakery in San [00:36:00] Francisco, it's Tartine. So I can tell you like in every city, which is my croissant,

Arthur: I love that. I love that you might get some people reaching out to you about cross song suggestions. Maybe even a, an invitation on how to make the best cro song. That's the hope anyway.

Stelio: if people have croissant recommendations, I'm always, yeah, I should probably be creating a croissant, TikTok or something at this point.

Arthur: How do you get over tough meeting or moment of time?

Stelio: I will probably go to a workout,

Stelio: Just do some cardio intense music. Yeah that's probably my go-to.

Arthur: If you could add one thing on your bucket list today, what would that be? I.

Stelio: One thing on my bucket list.

Stelio: , I've always wanted to go to tomorrow land. I don't know why that has probably quite high up on my bucket list. So the other one is I've always wanted to do Vipasana. Have you [00:37:00] heard of Vipasana?

Arthur: No.

Stelio: It's this retreat, this like meditation silent retreat. So it's a 10 days. 10 days. You go, they have 'em all over the world. You go and you just you can't have a notebook, you just need to sit there in silence for 10 days and you come outta your room, all individual come outta your room to eat and do meditation.

Stelio: And that's it. And I've just heard people have had the most insane experiences and revelations at this, the possum retreat. So that's been top of my bucket list for a while.

Arthur: Tell us something you wish you knew when you were younger. 

Stelio: I wish I knew how well the world reacts to authenticity and vulnerability. At least today. I think that's something when you're younger, sometimes you're like, oh, like I, I wanna, like fit in. I wanna do what, the other, do what other people are doing and doing a way that other people value.

Stelio: But actually, I think as I've gotten older, I've learned that making decisions and [00:38:00] being vulnerable, like making decisions based on your personal values, what you value, being yourself, being authentic. That is the way to have a meaningful life. And yeah, it's not gonna not everyone is gonna receive that well, but what's important is that the people that will be your meaningful connections and they will be your close friends.

Stelio: And to, to me that's the best way to live your life authentically and true to yourself.

Arthur: How do you want to be more there for yourself?

Stelio: I want to give myself more space to just, to relax. I think sometimes I like, it's really, I have a bit of, I don't know, like everyone has a HD and a DD these days and it's on a iic, it's probably on a spectrum and. Of course there's the medical definitions of it for me, I find it really hard to just sit and do nothing even for 30 minutes.

Stelio: So I [00:39:00] was actually listening to this podcast this neuroscientist and he was saying like, the best thing you can do sometimes for your creativity and your mental wellbeing is just sit for 30 minutes and do nothing. I think we've gotten so obsessed with this kind of wheel of productivity, every single minute needs to be , efficient and, like you need to be doing the next thing.

Stelio: And yeah I just feel the best thing I could do sometimes is give myself 10 minutes just to be, and to be aware of the world and that can actually be really helpful and energizing for your creativity and your wellbeing. 'cause sometimes I think people always think I think some of the best ideas come from being bored, right? If you're always like doing the next thing, it's hard to make those connections. Of course, you can get inspiration from places, but sometimes, the best really interesting thoughts can just come from you sitting there and observing your mind and your environment.

Arthur: So interesting. Thank you so much for sharing with us. A lot about yourself, a lot [00:40:00]about your journey your vision, your your incredible expertise within ai. And and, one thing that's clearly you need, that you have is the ability to connect the the engineering, the technical nature of the topic to how it creates value.

Arthur: And the way that you've gone into the different use cases and ways in which it could actually change how we live is a really a really interesting to learn about. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Stelio:I am super excited to see what the future of social AI looks like. It's gonna be it's gonna, it's gonna be really, interesting and it will blow people away at times. And it's really exciting. I hope that we can design for a meaningful connection and thanks fo