Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Sohrab Louie. Sohrab is a renowned technology innovator and entrepreneur known for founding VirtuLabs and co-founding CardAmore AI. He has collaborated on projects with Apple, Google, and Meta, to name a few world-class organizations. With extensive experience in software and AI, Sohrab excels in integrating cutting-edge technology with user-friendly design.
Sohrab, you've got a great background on the technology side, and you're one of the first that we're talking to that's got multiple companies that have been bootstrapped that you're growing. We'll dive into that. Before we do that, where are you joining us from today?
Sohrab Louie: Uh, I'm currently in San Francisco.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Are you originally from there?
Sohrab Louie: No, I grew up in Iran. Uh, I'm, I'm from Iran and moved to the US like 20 years ago. Um, I was one of those um kids who basically grew up with technology in a country that technology wasn't the thing at, at that time. We were a little bit behind and I was like one of the programmers that um just learned it on my own. And we had internet but it was super slow, like when there was like ISDN or whatever here, like uh broadband, we had dial-up. Um, and um, I was pretty connected with the tech world and Silicon Valley, but it was all through I don't know, internet. And um, back then there wasn't even MySpace. Uh, we had like Yahoo, yeah. I grew up with that uh, and then I moved to the US.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. That's great. Your upbringing you talked a little bit about, but what, what inspired you to eventually be an entrepreneur? What helped shape you in your upbringing, you think?
Sohrab Louie: To be honest, I, I think about it a lot. I was one of those kids that never chose a path, and the path was already picked since I was six or seven. I don't know by who. Uh, but I remember like uh, in elementary school I, my toys were like electronic components. Like I used to go and buy these kits that you could like put together to make like I don't know, like a flashing light or some sort of an electronic board for playing music. Um, and that was like... I was playing with a solder early ages, like maybe middle school. I don't remember. Uh, like a soldering iron, which is super hot. I used to burn my fingers all the time and my mom was like, "What are you doing?" Always afraid that I would get electrified and die. Yeah. So technology early on.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um, really cool. You talked about starting in Iran, being, growing up there, living there, and then came to the US. Was that a change of, for your career, was it a family move? What was the journey like there for you?
Sohrab Louie: Yeah, it was a family move. U- my whole family moved here. I mean, most of my mom's side, they all lived here for like decades. Um, they all left during the Revolution. Uh, but for some reason we left... we were left behind. And I remember like we always thought that we would leave next year, and then the next year, and the next year. And then I was like 18, 19 when it happened. Um, but I, I'm, I'm glad it happened a little bit later because um it kind of pushed me to, you know, I don't know, have a tougher skin maybe, which is very needed if you're an entrepreneur and you're doing your own thing. Uh, so it worked out at the end.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, you know most companies start out with an idea and they bring that to market and they build a company around it and they get funding and you know, they're kind of off to the races, whether it succeeds or not, you know, who knows. But for you, um, your path is, you know, probably more normal for the most founders that start companies. You don't always go out and get funding. You bootstrap, you use the resources you have, you find a market and you build, and you, you know, have a good company. And sometimes you grow that into a place where it gets acquired, maybe you do get funding, or maybe you just turn off the lights and start something new. Walk us through the journey of what you started um with VirtuLabs and we're also going to dive into kind of where else you spend your time because you have two or three other companies. So just give us a foundation behind your story.
Sohrab Louie: Um, yeah, like most of the startups that I've started, um they never scaled too big. And um they were always cash flow positive from the beginning. Uh, I started in Iran, um when I was in high school there weren't that many programmers in the market. So I was this little kid just being happy playing with his toys, whatever it was. Like making website[s] or um, back then there was something called Flash. We made animations with it, and then like people came and paid me to do things for them. I'm like, "Okay, I'm already doing this. Here's for you." Like I remember [I] even made like projects for PhD students. Like they were like, "Program this for me." Like, "Okay." Um so it started kind of early on.
And in Iran there was this sanction thing where like they were not allowed to import a lot of high-tech stuff, so the competition was... and I wasn't sophisticated enough to be able to like milk that, but a lot of other people who hired me knew that. So I ended up like building tools to record like X-ray machines and like printers, uh, like computer vision for like medicine and medical projects and like, not that many... that sophisticated type of projects, but a lot of people needed that at the time. And then when I moved here, I worked with like a doctor um who created this alternative way of parsing your blood lab results. Like you do a blood test and then it had different measurements. Um, and that was like one of the first projects I did in the US.
Uh, I studied like a little bit of engineering and arts, so I was always fascinated with um, you know, projects that also look good, like user-centric projects. And um, that's been like the path so far. And VirtuLabs is basically the first consulting firm that I started. I consult uh with some other people in that company. Like we, we've done projects for Google. We've done projects for Apple. Um, a lot of AR/VR projects, a lot of immersive, experiential projects. Uh, like we did some AR for the Van Gogh Exhibit, where you walk into this projection-mapped building and all the Van Gogh art pieces are all around and you're just immersed in that. Some other project similar to that where you walk in and it's like an African safari. You're in Afric-, Africa, all the walls are projected in a like a giant space, like you see a giraffe in real size projected on the wall. And um, I mean there's a lot of tech behind the scenes to figure out where you are in this space. As you walk, you leave like footsteps behind. Kids love that, just like running around.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Yeah. I want to jump in on that because I took a look at the website and um, uh, it's, it's amazing to see the interaction. I mean, it literally looks like you're inside, like in the field of a safari and you could see animals walking by you and drinking from water and kids like running after animals. You can see their footprints behind them. I mean the feeling that you get, it doesn't do it justice by telling you, you actually have to see it. And uh to me it just, it feels like an Apple-esque type of design or some, some sort of experience that it's almost like you're in another world. So it's truly amazing and, and that to me was one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show, is just to kind of understand what led you to kind of creating projects like that. Because if you think about building companies, you know, some are project by project and others are more, you know, sustainable systems that you license and, and you have monetary subscriptions for. But there's something to be said about the artistic side of technology and the impact it has on humanity. You see these kids walking through this museum and you know, it's like a life-changing [experience] for some maybe. It's really, really cool. Um, so what, how, how did you kind of get into that space and, and, and did you partner with some of the bigger technology companies to do that?
Sohrab Louie: Yeah, definitely. Uh it takes a village to make these projects happen. Like there's a company that just does projection. We do most of the programming, and other teams do like some of the graphic design. And uh videos, someone shot those videos in Africa, we didn't do that. Um and there was this parent company that funded everything, that we all worked for them. Um getting into that space, to be honest, um when you have a passion for building, you know, experiences, the best way to do it is do it physically in spaces where people walk in and they can experience something they cannot experience at home. Um and this large scale, it's becoming more trendy. Like if you go to New York now there's like ARTECHOUSE and there is another one called INTER_. These like journeys that you take, like the people take to go through different experiences to learn something or like feel something. Those are like fascinating.
And um I used to live in Portland, Oregon and work for a company called Second Story where most of the clients were museums. And there was a lot of text and things to look at and read, but we worked on the interactives. Like we created little experiences where people could like go to a touch screen, click on things and like see things in a different way, listen to stories, like watch videos even, which at that time for museums it was like you know high-tech thing. Now it's more normal. And like I used to just go and instead of like, like going through the experience, I was just like waiting for people to go through the stuff that we made. And that was like more interesting for me than like actually like enjoying the museum. Uh because like you could see how their facial expression changes and they, they're like amazed and "look at this, look at that." Um, same thing with all these experiential projects. Like when you get that little kid that's like super excited and like you are like, "finally all the work that we've done has paid off." It's more of like an emotional reward. And sometimes when you build apps or like websites you don't get to experience, you know, that one-on-one feedback that you get in experiential projects.
Uh like right now with CardAmore, we are creating this uh AI generated greeting card uh project. And people... I've seen people making it, like we, we've done user studies and um and we know that it's been opened, like we can track numbers, but we are not like recording the person who receives it and opens it. Uh, privacy. But that would be, that would be cool for me, like just like to see how people actually react to these cards being delivered to them.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Talk about that a little bit. What was the inspiration behind CardAmore and what exactly does it do?
Sohrab Louie: Um, CardAmore is a brand new project, recently released. Uh we are using AI to generate a very personalized uh message and a cover that you can basically customize and then send it to your friend, your boss, your... well, whoever. Um, so right now there is a lot of Christmas cards being sent. And you can say, "My friend you know, has a cat, so I want the cover to be like a Christmas tree and her and the cat. And then the messages are like, 'I want it to be poetic, talk about this.'" And then it writes the message for you. And then you have like a third page that you can actually type you know, not using AI. Um, and then we are hoping that uh not only we customize the, the whole card and then make it more um I don't know, personal for, for you to make something, you know... it's like you're crafting a beautiful uh graphic and then sending it to your friend with like a personal message. And then hopefully that would help you express uh what you have, uh the love you have for them or the, whatever that you're trying to convey.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. So that's all online. Is there a, a manual um card as well that can be produced out of that or is it all "send the message with the AI created um design and whatever wording it creates"?
Sohrab Louie: Right now it's all virtual, but we're working on creating a print out of that and send it through mail as well. Um the digital version is like simulating the physical version. That will be like you receive an email, you click on it, you see the back of the card and then you, you can open it and it opens the card for you and then you can read inside. Uh and then you flip it and there is like the logo. It's very similar to like an actual card that you used to get in mail, uh but like all of it is unique to that user. Like it's all generated, there's nothing like it um out there.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. I mean, that's just an example, example uh use case really of AI you know doing the job of someone that would have to be a creative person to sit down and come up with their design and then hope somebody would buy it or use it and send it out. So with te- technology, especially in AI, we're just seeing such a, such an integration of AI in different applications and really throughout the world, many different companies. Um so I, I want to touch on a few different things. One is, we're talking a little bit about your companies, but you know everybody has their thoughts about AI and kind of the rise of artificial intelligence, integration of it into current technologies and really what that does. But then also you know for the user that experience. Give us kind of your thoughts on how AI is changing how we live today and some of the areas that you are well versed in that you're seeing as well.
Sohrab Louie: Yeah, for sure. Um it's strange times. We are recording this right before 2024 and what a year we had. Like, like looking back from like dial-up to where we are now. And like my grandfather probably didn't even have electricity at some point in his life. So coming all the way to AI and having uh computers do our jobs for us, uh it's, it's a great time to be alive to be honest. It's like maybe it's the pivotal points of um I don't know, the collaboration between human and machine. The, the uncertainty is I don't know, crazy high. We don't know what, what's coming, even though we are in the field and we're building it, we don't know where it's going.
Um like the type of projects that we used to do, like we do a lot of AR/VR projects. Um I've done projects where you know, you need a lot of 3D designers and 3D animators to come and like build worlds for your uh virtual reality projects. Um and now that we've seen AI doing a lot of amazing job on 2D, we know 3D is next, and which is needed because it's such a hard thing to do. Like creating every little object by hand, it's time-consuming and it's very expensive. So for AR/VR projects to become a thing and the virtual reality industry to take off, we need AI to do a lot of the work for us. But where, where are we do- going to do like... what are we going to do, where are we going to work um if AI is going to take over? Like right now everyone's using ChatGPT, which is like you write something and it writes you back. But how many years are we from the version that you know, it's a browser, so you type something, it shows you your user interface and you can click on it. Um or even talk to it or even walk into it using [VR]. So like when it all merges in, a lot of those traditional programming jobs would probably go away. Uh there would be new ones hopefully. Um but are we all becoming like an AI operator at some point? Just like, like in manufacturing, where people just like stood by the big machine and made sure it does its job, are we going to do that? I don't know.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, there's a lot of different opinions on that. Uh I'm of the opinion that AI will help people do their job better. If, if you don't embrace it, you're probably going to be out of a job too. So um, you know, they talk about co-pilots and software development that can do the mundane stuff that... faster, maybe more, I don't know, accurately than a developer or a human. Um but then what does that do for the developer? Maybe it allows you to be more creative in different areas. Maybe it's the things that you don't necessarily want to spend your time on, you're creating and developing new applications or architecting or you know different areas within an application or just in general within a product. So uh yeah, it's, it's kind of early to tell what's going to happen, but you know, if you look at the market and you think about staffing for example, you know what, what, what, what happens to you know companies that you know are looking to hire less people because they don't need as many to do the same job. Or maybe they are more strategic in how they go about their, their business, business. So they do need different people, different core skills that we don't see.
I mean we, six months ago uh we were talking to Scale AI, which is very prominent in AI and labeling data and helping companies really make good use of their data and be able to you know, integrate AI. Um but you know, six, 12 months ago they were telling us that they hired their first prompt engineer and no one had even defined that title. Yeah, that was 12 months ago. Today prompt engineering is just someone that knows how to speak a language and is able to ask questions and and ask it in different ways and you end up training a model that eventually you know gives you the output you want. So even, even titles of roles and, and what, what you do to, to help within that whole space is, is evolving so quickly. Uh a lot to, to, to see through before we really know I think in a lot of ways.
Sohrab Louie: Yeah, that's, that's true. Um touching on that prompt engineering, I remember um when I graduated a lot of my friends who were English majors, they had a hard time finding jobs. Now prompt engineering, if you have an English degree, you are a prompt engineer, because all it needs is like someone who could like communicate in details and like understand the back and forth between the language models, large language models. Um also like uh, you al- you mentioned about like AI like labeling data. Uh we are working on another startup called CloudFusion, and we creating an in- interface to make it easier for DevOps people to orchestrate cloud and like use best practices. But um now that like Microsoft and Google, they're all behind these large language models, one of the fears that we have is we built this product and we release it, and at that time that we release it language models might be so advanced that no one actually has to do anything. You just type in what you want in the cloud, like "scale it" or like "I'm getting DDoS'd, like take care of, take care, that take care of it for me." And um, you're basically chasing against a more intelligent being, you know, like you're, you're in competition with something that you created that is a little bit faster than you.
It's, it's tough for all the startups to rethink through um the product cycle and like the five-year vision, the 10-year vision. Um all the funding is going to AI but there's a reason... like which I don't know if the smaller startups would even survive against the bigger ones like, like Google and OpenAI. But um it's a tough landscape and it's a tough um bet. Like you're betting against AI or pro AI, I don't know.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well let's, let's stay on the topic of AI tools and development. So if you look into the future, um you've got different you know tools, we can talk about PyTorch and obviously we know about ChatGPT, um AI expanding in software development and I guess some of the creative problem solving that we're seeing there. But give us, give us kind of your, your thoughts. You're, you're in the trenches, you're you know innovating and you're seeing trends happening. What are, what, what do you, what do you think is the future here of the tools specifically for AI?
Sohrab Louie: Yeah. Um there's this new thing called uh LangChain that I'm really interested in, and they created like blocks of code that uses AI in the middle. So you still program uh but in the middle you keep referring back to large language models or different like smaller AI models. And I was like, like reading about it and like using it. And I'm like, how far are we till all of this is automated? Like it writes itself. So you basically create... there is a GUI version, like a user interface version of it called Langflow or Flowise I think. And I feel like that's the future. Like you just put building blocks next to each other and then connect it. And then you ask the AI to this, "to take care of this part" and then like generate that. And that would be like a little brain that you design and then implement into your applications.
And like how far are we from uh like going past the co-pilot and just shipping uh little AI projects on your phone. Like your phone would be this large language model and it knows about you, and then your app would be the smaller model sitting on top of it. And then this multimodal type of environment where you just ask your phone to do this thing, and now that it has knowledge of this specific thing because it downloaded the app, it could just communicate with that app. And that's something new for you. Um I feel like we are going towards that, but I can't be certain. Again I'm just thinking out loud here.
Um another, another fascinating thing that's happening is um all these startups coming to basically help developers create websites using just like prompting. And then the next thing I see is, "Okay, we just take the developer out, and then the user who is using that website, based on their previous history we could modify the websites on the, to fly." So they would experience something that they are more used to or they, they prefer. So this hardcoded like static websites probably would go away. Um more conversational, more interactive, more being generated on the fly using AI. They would come in and um maybe that would be the next era of creation. Like where you don't really need to have a lot of knowledge to build things. Building would be easier. So everyone could help creating this ecosystem using AI.
Um even maybe it's not just tech, maybe like medicine. Like how many times do we go to the doctor just because we're coughing? And all they do is like measuring our heart rate, measuring our temperature, measuring the sound of like how we breathe basically. And we have sensors for all of that. You know we just pipe it in into like an, an AI model and then it would generate the result for us. Uh blood work I think we still have to go to the hospital for. Unless we do some chips, we swa- swallow some chips or something. I don't know, that we should ask...
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, we should ask Bill Gates, he has experience building vaccines with AI chips and lots of, lots of topics out there. Um, you know, you worked with some big companies, um Meta, Google, some of the big organizations out there. What was your experience working with them and what influence do you see with those big tech companies with the trends in technology, maybe even AI? What's, what are the pros and the cons that you, you kind of walked away with with your experience working with sort of the big tech organizations?
Sohrab Louie: Um I mean I've only worked with these big companies as an outsider. I've never been an employee of Meta or other big companies. I've been always either consulting or uh they had a project that they sent to us and then we did it for them. Um and I think when you grow too big you're either like very focused on the core and you don't have time for the other things, or you get very slow and you still need the smaller teams to come and be fast. Um from a lot of uh AR/VR and for Meta I did like uh some work with their uh assistant team where like you do voice recognition and like intent recognition using AI, so a lot of conversational stuff. And then I've done work with their AR/VR team as well. It's fascinating what we can achieve with like clustering people and um giving them a lot of um power because you know, bigger companies have a lot of money so they can like scale really big. And I feel like the same thing happened with AI. Like we scaled, we just piled up our money in like one server, just like set it on fire, and out of that fire, the ash came this phoenix, large language models, uh which was expensive to build but like it changed like an industry.
And I think uh similar thing happened with AR/VR. Like billions of dollars went into this, and then finally after like decades, we are with Apple releasing their uh their goggle, we see like it's getting somewhere finally. Um and so many times people were like "No, AR/VR is dead, it didn't work out." And then like three years later a new headset came in and like this building markets instead of like waiting for markets to happen is what these bigger tech companies are doing. Uh they create new markets for us, for the rest of the people, which is crazy. Um like no one needed a goggle, they made the need. They made the goggle and they made the need. Same with AI. Like we didn't even envision it, but then some papers came out and then they created an industry around it. Um I've been fortunate to be a part, small part of all those big events uh just because I love technology and technology trends, I jump on everything. Uh but it's fascinating just in the last 10 years how far we've gone.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, talking about the Apple Vision Pro. Uh we had a guest on just yesterday who was involved in the AI buildout of that product and there are so many teams that are building this incredible product that you can you know, wear and see things as they are and also have a virtual world embedded into what you're viewing. And um where you look, you know can dictate like what you're reading within the screen. And um being able to send messages just by your eyes and being able to communicate with your voice, voice, and everything's quickly um sent out. And if it's not accurate it's able to fix things. And they've really, they're spending a lot of effort on this. It seems like a fascinating product. One of the issues that, that they, they, they had was, and I think for a lot of AI companies, is being able to test that whatever data you have isn't going to hallucinate based on the language model that you have. And, and the data that you're, the output is going to be accurate. So, so there's a lot of work going into that. But they're building a whole business around testing of AI models, which is an industry that probably didn't exist 12 months ago because there wasn't a need for it. So as much as there's roles in I think software development that are going away, there's also opportunities to figure out what, what, what holes can be plugged.
Sohrab Louie: Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Where, where's the innovation in the space that's being developed as a new category? Um you know, I heard a statistic that something like 90% or I think it was like 90% of the businesses today that have data in them, there's not enough resources to actually help them figure out what they do with the data. Like how do they put that into a language model? And then how do they make use of it? And how do they make use of integrating AI? Because it's such a big market that there's not enough companies and consultants to go in and help them figure out how to move it forward as a project. So the big companies like Scale AI and a lot of these big organizations, the big consulting firms, yeah, they have the people, they have strategy, they can go in and you know pitch their solution and implement and help start the process. But there's a lot in that sort of middle market space that there's a demand for it and no one's serving it. So for, for the listeners out there I think there's a ton of innovation and support around AI and just for normal business, businesses that want to figure out how they can better use their data for their own customer base. So I think there's, there's, there's kind of pros and cons to both. But it's enlightening to hear from different founders that are creating platforms and solutions about what they're seeing. You know, we're on I think close to episode 150 now of all founders, and a lot of them are AI companies, but a lot of them aren't. And there's so much that is still on the horizon that needs to be tackled that, and we're just scra- scraping the surface from my opinion.
Sohrab Louie: True. True. We, we, we do some consulting and uh we're helping um companies to basically bring their data and create a chatbot and um you know, a layer on top of OpenAI. Um basically use the power... And the, I feel like a lot of these old school companies that used to basically do a lot of customer support, all that data, all those messages that they have saved back and forth with all these questions, that's like gold now. Because you can fine-tune your model based on um all these like customer data that you have and create like automated flows and maybe like save 30% of your cost, because like customer support is very expensive. Um and now that basically it's easier to create chatbots, um you're right. Maybe like a lot of people who used to work on, in customer support would lose their job. But then all these data companies need to come in and figure out how to bring all of that data into uh training uh AI models and create like custom experiences.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I think we're early on in that discovering what new services are out there um that can be provided to companies and then putting products around it, or maybe you're, you invent a new company that solves problems for the masses. We, we don't know, but uh you know, I spent seven years at Oracle and I was fascinated to learn recently that when you know, most fintech, most big banks use Oracle databases on the back end. Company, people don't know that. Oracle is pretty pervasive on the backend of most big corporate systems. So whether you know it or not, you're probably in their database somewhere. But when those databases go down, businesses stop. And so they can't ever really go down, and they're using technology, and I'm sure it's AI today, um where before systems even go down they're fixed and up again. And that used to be people having to go in there and figure out, troubleshooting what the problem is, where it's at, "let's get it up, let's get it up." Now they have you know backup servers and systems too that help. But they have systems now that you don't even have to touch it. They have AI QA that's testing and retesting and solving problems before they happen and when they do happen they're solved. And um, so it's really interesting to see behind the scenes. But now ChatGPT has brought it all to the forefront with the consumer knowing that you know they can actually see value by simple questions and getting answers back, which is fascinating.
After we do this podcast I'm going to send you the show notes of this podcast, which will be um sent to you within five minutes. It's going to be everything we talked about and the finer points that we pulled out of it. Not me creating, but with AI. And so as just a use case from a, a podcast host, you know, what used to take us 90 days to film something and to get it published really could be done in 10 minutes. I mean if you really think about how quickly the AI is automating the systems that we use today. Um now of course there's more things to think about in terms of publishing, but um that's all technology and you know we have a whole team, but maybe we have to figure out how to, to maximize how our team works. And, and we don't, we're not letting people go, we're just, "hey, let's think about new platforms we can go after, new pro- shows we can you know produce." And so I think there is a combination balance of what you lose and what you gain, and then being strategic with that.
Sohrab Louie: Definitely. We, especially in the creative field, we are gaining some sanity. I remember like editing videos back in the day, um how many times my computer crashed and my project wasn't saved. Now just like, I was just like cutting clips, like taking the good parts out and like putting them together it took, took days. Now I've seen like an After Effects plug-in with AI that just like cuts everything for you. Like, like a minute. And like that's crazy. Like I wish I could go back and do this and maybe like gain a few days out of my life back because I, I feel like I lost a lot of time doing a lot of manual labor type of work on, on the computer that I, nowadays people don't have to do.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I hear you. As we look into 2024, you've got multiple companies that you're working with. What are you excited about? What are you excited about the companies you're building today?
Sohrab Louie: Um I, I really hope that um the economy would support what we are building to be honest. Um, cuz like every time there's a hype around like a specific sector, there is a little setback. Um I'm a little bit afraid of 2024 to be honest, but like I'm super excited about AI and what it's bringing to the table, how it's going to shift our economy that I don't know. Um but with all of these like little ventures that we have going on and we building and consultings and the trends that we are seeing not only me but also my colleagues, um I feel like this year we, we have to focus on like human experiences and like how to make life easier and more pleasant. Even if the economy is not good, then we might be able to do like other things that would help people to live a better life, um maybe easier.
Uh definitely we don't control a lot of the economy cycles and the ups and downs. Um but two things that I'm hopeful for: one, no war in the world. That's like cliche, but I really believe that we need to go beyond human versus human and like understand we all in this together. Soon we have to fight machines and all these like silly wars that we are having right now would make no sense in the future. Um, two, I feel like people um, with all these tools that is going to be available to them, is going... they really should just focus on creating. A lot of entrepreneurs out there um who are like a non-technical, the non-technical founders, like I have a lot of friends who are non-technical founders. And with ChatGPT and all these like vast amount of knowledge, I feel like this is the best time for us to start learning. But things that we were passionate about before but it was hard to go and learn about them, now it's just like a few sentences away from us. And as a person who loves learning new things, even though there is no point because ChatGPT knows it all, but there's a pleasure that we get from like learning about new things, experiencing new experiences. Like creating a new I don't know, itinerary for the next travel using AI, um experiencing different places of the, in the world using like virtual reality. These little things I feel like would be our little pleasures in the next year or two.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. I, I, I love that. You know, we talked a little bit about what you created with the virtual reality immersion experience. For the listeners that want to go check it out, what's the website that they could get, go to to see what that is?
Sohrab Louie: Most of the projects that we have uh are on our website virtulabs.com and virtu is v-i-r-t-u-l-a-b-s.com. And uh you could see um for example the Illuminarium project that we've done, the uh, there's a little video there. And you could also go to Illuminarium, I think um the Atlanta one or there's one in Vegas, on their website. And if you're around there you could go check it out. The, the shows are running and they're pretty cool. Um and then other projects that we've done you could also see some of the videos on our website.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And if somebody wants to send a, a, a letter out, virtual letter to their loved ones or to their family members they're not going to see, maybe they're abroad, and they want to just connect but they want to use AI to do it. Where would they go there to find um the solution that you created there with, is it CardAmore AI?
Sohrab Louie: Yeah, CardAmore AI. And CardAmore is c-a-r-d-a-m-o-r-e.ai. More, more... um yeah. And please send us feedback like uh, and stay in touch because if you're passionate about this or if you had a good experience using CardAmore, uh we would love to hear from you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Well I want to wrap up here with just three questions, uh I call it "Three Questions." It's just three questions, three answers. So, Sohrab for you, where do you go to think big or to brainstorm these days?
Sohrab Louie: That's spot on. Um I had an opportunity to go to an office space. I've been remote for like a good 10 years now. And all of the projects that we work on, we usually do a draft and then we get together and then we do some deployment or whatever. But I went to this office space and we did whiteboarding and it been like a while since I did actual whiteboarding with people. And I wish like ChatGPT was there and it could whiteboard with us. Like there was this disconnect between like actual the enjoyment of like brainstorming and drawing things on a whiteboard and instead of Googling, doing a ChatGPT of like estimating and like all of that. Um, um, so I feel like a fusion of these two would be really cool to see. Like whiteboarding either remote or um with your co-workers and then having this AI to also fill in the gaps for you. Uh I like, I like it both. With a lot of projects that we do, because it's physical we need to be face-to-face or like be in a place and do brainstorming together, uh which now we are used to doing it remotely. But, and then like the input from AI is always appreciated, I always say.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Sounds like a company right there.
Sohrab Louie: Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Sounds like an AI solution you're ready to build you know, being able to write it on a whiteboard collectively and then seeing ChatGPT like you know quickly uh immerse it on the board as you're talking. I remember there were whiteboards out there that you could like use like a digital pen to write on, I think Cisco made one, uh Google made one.
Sohrab Louie: Cisco, if you're listening, yeah. You can reach out to Sohrab and he's got a... There was this Jamboard thing uh from Google that's, now that they have that multimodal, I feel like it's just a few months away.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, gotcha. Very cool. Um where do you or what, what do you do to stay positive in the roller coaster of a bootstrapped company?
Sohrab Louie: Oh yeah, yeah. Um to be honest, I, I enjoy every step of it. Um all these challenges, I try to immerse myself with new problems all the time. Because like I would go crazy if there is no problem to solve in my life.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Create problems.
Sohrab Louie: So uh every, every little thing I do, I get a little bit of like positive feedback, right? And you fail obviously a lot of times, but like I, I tend to focus on like what I've learned by things that didn't work. So next time I would not do that or do it differently. Um but even that pain that you get from like doing projects and running like um companies and startups, that pain is like positive pain. Like it's enjoyable um suffering that you do because at the end of the day you see the light at the end of the tunnel and you're just going towards that, especially if you have users. And that gives... that they can give you feedback. You know, like it's hard work and then immersed, like, like you get a lot of um positive feedbacks that would energize you to go back and, and you know do a lot more work and just to satisfy your users. Um and I hope that next year AI would help us to do less of uh manual labor and then get our users happier, faster.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Um last question for you. You know they say experience is the biggest teacher. What experience have you learned that you think is worth sharing with other founders that are building companies that you think is priceless?
Sohrab Louie: Um, I've been always um, I've been always into like getting something out sooner and having people to use it. And then watching them and based on the feedback that I get, go back and like build it up and get it bigger, make it bigger. Um I mean, to be honest I've done only smaller projects for bigger companies. Uh I haven't released my own ChatGPT or like billion dollar company yet. Um but two things that I really enjoy is creating experiences, watching people use it, and also like teams. Like gathering talented groups of people who are passionate about like that subject. I feel like that's the product, not what's being built. The teams that we make, you know like finding, finding talent, find, finding, I, I would say like people who are like with the same mentality and love to work on similar projects. Uh that's the key. And um, I would always focus on that first.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Well Sohrab, I want to thank you for joining us today and sharing your story. And um to all the listeners for listening, I really appreciate you uh spending your time with us today. Uh Sohrab, if somebody wants to find you or find any of your companies, where's the best place to go?
Sohrab Louie: Um LinkedIn would be one of the good ways. Um also I'm, they can always email me, I'll be more than happy to jump on a call, brainstorm whatever they need. Um also it's been amazing talking to you and this was a lot of fun. A lot of nerding out you've done in the past hour and I, I always love it and this was great. Thank you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Sure, well thank you to all the listeners again for listening. I hope you have a happy holiday, you as well, Sohrab. Look forward to catching up with you in the New Year here. Until then everyone, we'll see you on the next episode. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal. Enjoy and take care.
Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
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