Welcome to the Girl Dad Show. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Girl Dad Show. I'm super excited for having Rob here on the show. Rob, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having me.
Let's jump right in. Why don't you tell the listeners what you do for a living?
I run a company called UR AI, the letter UR.AI. And basically we enable people to create individual AIs of themselves so they can use it in their own life or share it or even monetize it. And so we have doctors, lawyers, accountants, writers, podcasters, you know, people who want to make an AI and share it with the world.
Got it. And then the idea is that people can then interact with that AI version of yourself and be able to have access to you and your experiences and thoughts.
That's correct. And we built a specific model for this type of AI, which is called a human life model. And so we figured out through science, working with clients, is that we have a very different data set as humans than a large language model, which is compiled human knowledge. Your individual knowledge data set also incorporates your personal stories, your emotions, and your personal reasoning, your value system. So we're able to sort of map that in a model. And then when you're interacting with yourself, it's like your best therapist. I will say my best therapist is myself. Or you share it with others and they can basically utilize your knowledge and expertise to help themselves and better things or even do work. Maybe they want to use your AI to create a presentation or write something or create a spreadsheet, but it'll always have your expertise and deep knowledge and personal experiences in it.
That's awesome. I have a couple more questions on it before we go into double clicking into the actual product. How did you get into this?
I previously ran a company for 28 years called LivePerson. I invented when you chat on websites for customer care, and I invented that technology in 1997. So if you ever chat on a website, it didn't exist, and then I invented it because I was building websites. And then I patented that technology, and then I took that company public. And then we basically became a very large conversational AI company. We were 3,000 people, public company, it was about four and a half billion in market cap. And what I saw, though, working with chat and messaging and AI and the contact center was this human dialogue. It's a very unstructured dialogue, but it has a uniqueness to it per human. Like, no contact center interaction was the same. Everyone had their twist on how they viewed dealing with their credit card company or their telco. So I started to see the individuality in that data set, and I thought that data set is more representative of humanity than a data set that's been aggregated of knowledge that's been on the internet, because all the current models. So that kind of got me into thinking about humans. I left that company three years ago, and I decided to start what is today UR AI two years ago.
That's awesome. I love that. So you invented something that was very, very novel at the time and you were able to scale it to a publicly traded company. What a ride. That's an amazing ride.
33 years old. It was a dream of mine since I was a kid. Since I was like 14 years old, I read a book in the library about being public, and I thought, man, I actually still have the book. I stole it out of the library, which I feel bad about. I was so intrigued by the idea that it felt like it was a really high form of business, like that's the Olympics. And so I worked so hard. I had a lot of failures in my life, and then I started LivePerson in 1995 after my first company failed out of college. And from there, I sort of built it into what it became, sort of one client at a time. And learned a lot about—obviously I was an early pioneer in AI and especially for the enterprise. And so I always had a vision of humanity and machine, and I always felt humans are first and machines are always to be supportive. And I don't like the current dialogue is machine first, humans are replaceable, and I don't subscribe to that vision. I have a vision where humans are benefiting from humanity and more abundant because of this technology, not losing their jobs and we're not smart enough compared to Claude. I just don't see that world.
That's awesome. And so that's kind of why you're embarking on this new adventure.
Yeah. That's why, you know, visions are just given to you. And even as a kid, I was given a lot of visions of what I wanted, whether it's washing a car—I had a car washing business or whatever. Things just come to me. Feel like they're more of a journey that's interconnected. And no matter if it's a bad day or good day, because you have a lot of both of those, you've got to stay on the straight and narrow of who you are and why you were created and what you're here to give before you leave, because you will leave, you know.
Yeah, that's awesome. I do have a random question about the journey of being a publicly traded company and now being back into early stage. What's been the hardest thing to adjust to?
Well, I mean, I didn't want to run a public company anymore, to be honest. Pre-COVID, I loved every part about it because we were an office culture and we built a whole culture. Our core values are based on meaningful connections—one of our core values: create meaningful connections. It was really based around this connection we had with each other and our customers and our customers' customers using our products like the chat. And post-COVID, it was like nobody wanted to come back to the office, and it was just a disaster. And I don't know, I kind of felt out of place. I just didn't feel that it was really what I wanted. And then I decided let's go back to being hands-on. And I will say, you know, when you get to a certain size—we had a half a billion in revenue and 3,000 people, I had a big leadership team—days kind of just happen. They're going to happen in a certain way. You've got a lot of things programmed. Here, I know when I wake up, right when I open my phone, I'm like, I wonder what's coming for me. Is it a good day? Is it something bad? There's not enough layers between you and, I'll call it, the street. Like, you are on the street and everything comes to you.
The whole thing is like, on those days where I feel like I'm getting pounded, I've been through so many of those days. I'm like, this is going to be today; it's going to end the way it's going to end. I had a saying many years ago: nothing's ever as bad as it seems, and just ride the day out, and tomorrow. Because I've been through enough days where it looked—I was in some bad days when I went public during the dot-com and everything imploded and I had to fire 90% of the company. I mean, there were days where it was dark, and so I'm always like, I got through those days, I'll get through whatever's going on today. Right now I'm more excited now. My wife is like, and my kids can see, I think, that I'm just a different—I'm lighter, you know, a lighter person than I was when I was at LivePerson.
So, is it safe to assume that your aspirations are now changed? You're no longer looking to take this public?
That's a good question. I wouldn't say I—I would love to take a company public under my terms. I took a company public under a lot of people's terms because I was young, I was a first-timer. So they write the rules and if you want to go play, go play the rules. If you could write your rules and go public, it's a great place because it allows you to compete on a different level. There are a lot of negativities to it, you know, because quarterly calls and everything, but I wouldn't say that. I guess I just want to build the type of company I want to build now, and we'll see where that part plays in. I have no focus on it. I don't have a desire to do it. I did it. I have a desire to build a big company that can impact the world in a positive way, you know? So, that's what I'm trying to do.
That's awesome. And then kind of segueing into what your kids were saying, what do your kids think you do for work? Take a guess at what they would say.
They think I replicate humans. They've talked to my AI and stuff like that. So, my AI speaks and everything, so they know exactly what I do. I work with—now there's 18 of us, and my kids are nine, eight, and five. When I ran LivePerson, obviously they're younger, and they would come to the office there, too, sort of before COVID. But they have a different connection to the business than they did when I ran the other one. Just it's a different feel. They know everybody, know 100% of the people in the business. There, they only knew a small group of New Yorkers out of 300 of us there. So, it's a lot different than it is here. It feels more like a close-knit group than it did there, you know.
So they do understand what you're doing and building, and they've interacted with it. Yeah.
We're like future entrepreneurs. My dad was an entrepreneur, my grandparents were.
Yeah. Everyone in my family—there isn't too many people who got a job. I guess we never thought we were good enough to get a job, you know. So I grew up with an entrepreneurial household, and my kids are growing up with the same thing. It's like when I left LivePerson, I had choices, and I will say the number one thing that I felt was important was my kids. I've heard this saying that your kids will learn from your actions and by watching you doing things. And when I exited LivePerson, there was a lot of stuff that happened over there. We had an activist investor. It wasn't like I left—I left because I was forced to, actually. It wasn't what I thought was going to happen after 28 years. And then we had this disruption come in the business, which ultimately ended up destroying the business after I left. But my kids saw this last year of me at that business, and it was very hard on them. It was very hard on my family. And other friends who went through the same situation around the same thing I did, we all have a very similar experience: the impact on our families and our children were real because we were fighting for our lives. It was an existential threat to our businesses, and they saw that. And so I thought when I exited, the most important thing was like, people could take my company, but they'll never take me. And my kids need to understand that. I could just hang it up and say that was the end of my experience in business, but that would be me quitting, and I won't quit. That's one thing people know me for: I will persevere. And so I was like, you can take the company, you can do whatever, you can say things about me, you can do whatever, but in the end, you can't take what's in my head, and you can't take my drive and my vision, and I'm going to take that somewhere else. I will put that into a new vehicle. I'm going to get new investors. I'm going to bring a group of people together that are going to want to be a part of that. And my kids are a part of that. And they had to, I think, go through an experience to understand where their father ended up today.
Yeah. So, you're saying that they got to see that transition and so you got to show them through actions, not just words, what that adversity overcoming looks like.
Yeah. And so I never thought they would experience that. I waited till I was 47 to get married because I was traveling 200 days a year and I figured I just don't have time for a family. And then I decided I'm getting old enough where it's time to do something about this. And I met my wife and we got married, and then we had kids right away. But I didn't expect—I thought, okay, I've got a stable enough life. The company was big enough and there was a lot of stability there, a lot of certainty, a lot of comfort. And they saw that part of me, and now they see the uncomfortable. They see the change, the challenges, they see all of that, which is life. I thought it would be pretty bad, and it's not about the money. Like, I could go on and maybe retire, but it wasn't about that. It would be about them seeing someone defeated—they would see their father got defeated and then he decided to get out of the game. And that's a very powerful motivating force for me. I literally got up and I got out and I came to California, Silicon Valley, and I started to work every day and started to build these two companies that I have. And I started to do things because they never saw—there was no break in the action. I didn't even take a vacation. I was like, we're going. I came up to Silicon Valley, came back, told my wife, let's go, everything's happening out here with AI. We packed up the kids and we left.
That's awesome. I love it. And that's great. So, where did you move from to Silicon Valley?
I was in New York, Connecticut. We had two homes; we had one in Connecticut. We were in Connecticut because of COVID, we stayed there. So, I basically just packed up, sold the house in Connecticut, and then literally it was like October, November of 2023. And then we just basically uprooted, put them into a school, and you know, kids are malleable.
Come to California, like good weather and stuff.
There's definitely worse places. Yeah, I'm actually originally from Silicon Valley.
Yeah, so I was born in Oakland and I lived in 13 different cities in the Bay Area.
Growing up, my dad was also an entrepreneur and he had to move us around a lot. And then I moved to Texas about six years ago. So, six years ago, I moved to Austin and I've been here ever since. But very familiar with the density and proximity of thinkers and disruptors and capital allocators in Silicon Valley. There's no better place to build technology, for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. And I just needed change. I've been in New York my whole life. I built a company there, although I traveled a lot. I know myself, and if you know how to make change happen, the best thing you can do is put yourself in a physical place that's foreign. Because I really disliked—I built LivePerson for 28 years and people would not give me a break sometimes. I wanted to change and I would change, but they would always look at you as the person from yesterday, not the future. And I was always like, I don't want to deal with that. So same here, even my friends—and I had very close friends, still do—but I was like, I just want a different group of people that don't know me, didn't see that part of my life where they had to experience me every day complain or be out to dinners and I'm like a zombie. They don't know; they just see me as Rob, the guy out here starting a company who built a really big, successful company. I don't have to talk about how do you feel, or wow, that happened. No one ever even knew what happened in my past. I can't deal with cognitive load about the past. Such a waste of time, you know.
It really is, yeah. And I love that you just did that, even at this stage of your career. It's freaking beautiful because it's so validating to think about change and it's never too late to change and make a difference, right? You're never too old to do that, you're never at the wrong stage of your career to do that. You can always pick back up and start something new. And it's kind of the same thing I've been telling my peers as well, because I moved here when I was 40 as an executive at a tech company, and I just did it because my thought process was it's too much calories to combat nominal changes here and there because there's so much baggage. There's so much history and relationships that you carry. So if you want to make a stark difference in your life, it's a lot easier just to remove yourself and put yourself in a proximity of people that just think like you want to think, so that it's easier for you to change. It's the same thing with dieting and same thing with anything, right? So it's like, why is it different for business? That was the same thesis I had, and I just uprooted myself and moved to Texas sight unseen. I'd never been here before. Yeah.
Kind of funny. It's like a Rubik's cube of life. The change part, when the Rubik's cube's colors all change, it's not like you just sit there and look at it; you've got to start working on something new.
I thought I'll start working on something new and I'll let my mind open up to what's out there. Being here, there's an energy here. Obviously, you've got the Steve Jobs story and you have a foundation of creators here, and there's an energy here that allows that to happen. I never wanted to live here because I was a New Yorker, and I had a pride about being a New Yorker about diversity and diversity of thinking. But here, when I flew out and just started to think about it and spend time with my friends and peers, I was like, in AI, it's happening here right now.
Totally. Totally, yeah. And I get the New Yorker thing, too. I mean, I love visiting New York and I love my New York friends, but there's definitely a New York way of thinking as well, too. It's not as diverse as you're making it sound.
It's not. And people are like—unfortunately, sadly, there's a sad competition there. You compete for everything, from your restaurant to where you live. And when I was young, it was great. When you have kids and stuff, it's like a little bit old. I don't want to compete in some weird game. And so it was better for me to compete differently here. But I find it's just better. I've got a group of people I work with, and I got great investors, and I'm just fortunate.
That's great. That's awesome. Yeah, I look forward to talking more about that later on, and hopefully we can stay in touch. I do have deep roots in—that's where I was born and raised, so I'm from that area. But I'd love to know more about your goals as it relates to parenting, because you're kind of alluding to it a little bit, but I'd love to know, because it sounds like you put a lot of thought into the kind of father you want to be in this next chapter. Can you just articulate that a little more clearly? What are your success goals in this chapter for your fatherhood journey?
