[00:00:00] Dara: So we try to predict what you might think about a new situation, which may make less sense for hosts and may make more sense for some of our customers who are like doctors or experts. Um, people who provide advice to certain people in their personalized situations.
[00:00:17] Liam: Who is Delphi's typical Customer, you know,
[00:00:20] Dara: coaches, content, creators, CEOs, especially CEOs have tons of employees who ask them questions.
[00:00:28] I'm like, how should I think about the business? How should I think about our customers? So they want to clone themselves to scale themselves and now Airbnb hosts. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee. Let Bruce Lee 'cause it's so hard on the tees. Loosely. Looking up those rhymes.
[00:00:43] Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you are better. Put direct. Mm. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.
Intro
[00:00:52] Liam: Thank you for joining and listening to the. Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence for you to go out there and get more direct bookings.
[00:01:02] My name is Liam Carolan. I'm Mark Simpson's co-host. And today we are focusing on the spotlight. On a business, which you need to know about as a host. Um, you need to know if you're in any business at all, cause we're talking about AI and we're talking about a system or an AI. Mechanism that could help you in any business that you're in.
[00:01:23] And, uh, today, uh, we're going to be introducing you to, uh, Delphi Delphi dot AI is where you can go and find out more information. We've got the co-founder and CEO. We've got Dara Ledger Vardian. And, um, yeah, I'm just so excited to have him here and, um, I'm not going to take any thunder away from him introducing the business because what it does will all become clear.
[00:01:45] Come along, Dara. Thank you for joining me.
[00:01:47] Dara: Liam. Thanks for having me.
A bit about Delphi AI
[00:01:49] Liam: So first of all, can you give yourself and your business an introduction? Where in the world are you at the moment? You know, your name and also what the business does.
[00:02:00] Dara: Yeah. So I'm originally from Houston, Texas, studied physics and computer science, been working in AI for the past six years.
[00:02:08] And this is an important part of the story because it's what's led to the insight for starting Delphi. When I was working on my first company, I was reading a book about my grandfather and I wanted to be able to. Talk to him and learn from him because he was no longer around so I created a clone of him using a book that was written about him so that it could think like him and it could speak like him and I kind of treated it as a personal mentor as that first startup.
[00:02:38] Uh was being worked on and that startup got acquired but I got interested in this idea of Letting people scale themselves because we're all constrained by the time You're either no longer around or you're very busy Gets the same questions over and over again, and you obviously cannot attend to each person individually in a personalized way.
[00:02:58] So we started Delphi, which is a digital cloning platform that can capture how you think, what you know, and your expertise, and make it available to others in a personalized way so that you can truly scale yourself. To infinitely many places and people at a time. We're based in San Francisco. We're six people and we raised our seed round earlier this year from Founders Fund and Lux Capital.
How can Delphi help hosts?
[00:03:19] Liam: There's lots of new AI tech around and there's a few of these, um, kind of AI bots and things like that. The thing that drew me and I know Mark too, uh, to Delphi was it's that personality that you give it. It is something which it learns personality. But from a host point of view, one of the things which we always talk about boostly is when we're talking about direct bookings is displaying, uh, your personable skills, you know, actually being hospitable as a host and that side of things.
[00:03:48] Well, the drawback to that is we can't be available 24 hours a day. People are flying in from different time zones. People are asking questions in the middle of the night. We can't be available all the time. So how could Delphi help hosts who are listening to this?
[00:04:05] Dara: Yeah. So as a host, um, that connection with the.
[00:04:09] The person is important and making them feel like you're available for them. And they're not just having to find the docs of like the place that they're staying at. So with Delphi, not only can it answer questions, but. It becomes more personalized to the people who use it over time. So before someone asks about the pricing of a property, it'll know that later on and can use that to make the information that it provides more detailed based on where the gaps might've been previously.
[00:04:41] So with a clone, you can put it on your website, you can add it to a phone number. We're going to be releasing clone calling in a couple of weeks, which also allows them to call your clone. It can speak in your voice as well. The goal isn't to trick these people into thinking they're talking to you, but more offer access where there previously was none and them having like unlimited access to your brain and trusting that this is an accurate representation of you.
[00:05:06] That's the challenge that we're solving. Can we create an accurate representation of you digitally?
How much work is Involved?
[00:05:11] Liam: And how much work is involved? Because one of the things that I worry about, um, certainly as a host, I mean, I'm concentrating on my hosting business, um, trying to get more direct bookings. How much time and effort does it take to clone yourself?
[00:05:27] Dara: Anywhere from 30 minutes to a day, um, depending on how much content you have. So we have integrations with Google Drive. OneDrive, Dropbox, Notion, Twitter, uh, Files, Audio Files, YouTube videos, Podcasts. And we have a straightforward interface for you to drag those in and upload them to your clone. And then from there you just gotta decide where, where do you want your clone to live?
[00:05:48] Is it Slack? Is it a phone number? Is it on your website? And that's it. There's no maintenance from there. We have an analytics dashboard to help you understand the questions people are asking. And maybe you can use that kind of data to improve your property and improve your communications with your, uh, with the stays.
[00:06:08] Liam: One of the worries I have is What if somebody asks a question that it doesn't know the answer to, or that I've not fed in the information? What, what happens then?
[00:06:17] Dara: So, two things will happen. One, we have a field that puts a custom message when the clone is unable to answer a specific question. And we have a strictness score.
[00:06:27] So if you want high strictness so that the clone only says things that it has been trained on, you can increase that strictness score, and it'll say I don't know. Um, reach out to me at this email and it'll notify you as the clone owner. Hey, someone asked a question that you can't answer so that you can pay attention to that customer personally.
[00:06:44] You can almost prioritize who to pay attention to based on the questions that they're asking. Um, if the strictness score is low. What we try to do is not just capture the knowledge that you have, but also how you might think about new things. So we try to predict what you might think about a new situation, which may make less sense for hosts and may make more sense for some of our customers who are like doctors or experts.
[00:07:11] Um, people who provide advice to certain people in their personalized
[00:07:16] Liam: situations. Who is Delphi's typical? Customer, you know, who are the people driving towards this and clone themselves in droves?
[00:07:25] Dara: Yeah, so at its core, the simplest version of anyone whose time is of high demand, or anyone who Who's demand for their time is, is more than the time that they can supply.
[00:07:36] But, uh, to bring it down more granularly, I would say, experts, people with proprietary knowledge, um, are big on our platform. Coaches, content creators, CEOs, especially CEOs have tons of employees who ask them questions like, how should I think about the business? How should I think about our customers?
[00:07:56] They want to clone themselves to scale themselves. And now Airbnb
[00:08:00] Liam: hosts. Am I right in thinking the more questions that people ask, they learn from the more questions the person who's been cloned, the more we get feedback on what the questions are being asked at any stage?
[00:08:13] Dara: Yeah. So in the analytics dashboard, you can get popular topics and popular questions.
[00:08:18] It doesn't currently get better overall, the more questions get asked, but it gets better for that person. So, that's what I mean by personalized conversations. You can almost have an individualized relationship with each person who's talking to the client.
What will the future hold?
[00:08:33] Liam: Where do you think the future of this, what's the potential, what will the future hold?
[00:08:41] Dara: There is so much on our product roadmap, and it just gets larger and larger every day because we're constantly coming up with new ideas. In the short term, um, you know, clone calling, making the voice realistic. Um, and probably a year from now we could also do video, so you can FaceTime and like have like a real-time conversation.
[00:08:59] Uh, I think what becomes interesting is when we get good at predicting what someone might say in a new situation if the clone doesn't know anything about it when it's predictive. So if I were to clone you and ask your clone a question and ask you a question that the clone has not been trained on, it would say the same thing as you.
[00:09:18] That's where I think it gets really interesting. Um, we're also working on a ton of monetization levers to help people monetize their clones because everyone has. Some proprietary knowledge that some people are willing to pay for or access.
[00:09:32] Liam: Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Boostly podcast. Bruce Lee. Let Bruce Lee 'cause it's so hard on the teas. Loosely. Looking up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.
