Andrew McClintock: What do you love about Robert Irwin, his artwork, and his writing?
Eugenia Kuyda: I really got into him through a couple of friends of mine, but especially after reading his book, which I think is a really special art book, different from so many others, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. We're so busy just trying to get stuff done, win, just going through the days, that everything becomes a little bit of a blur. You're kind of in survival, fight-or-flight mode. Meanwhile, his work is all about just going down to the perception level, ultimately noticing and truly seeing the world, noticing your perception. But the thing is, once you go down to that level, everything slows down. So it becomes almost an antidote to that everyday rat race of just trying to get somewhere — where life becomes just this nuisance, just this kind of period between you going from A to B versus being the thing itself.
Most artists you discover by looking, seeing their work. [...] And I think interesting art or artists, you learn about by learning their philosophy, and then you can learn to start to see the world in a different way.
Andrew McClintock: This makes me think about the personalized experience — which no one else can really have. [...] The artist can start the conversation, and then it's up to the viewer how they interpret that experience and make it their own. That concept feels similar to what you're doing with Wabi with the personalized software — software for an audience of one.
Eugenia Kuyda: Our main idea around Wabi was — when we're little kids, we're all creators. We come up with stuff, we make different worlds. Even digitally, kids are all on Roblox making their own spaces, making their own games, or building stuff in Minecraft. [...] But when we grow up, we all of a sudden become users, and we just become these passive consumers of stuff that's being pushed on us by people. In David Foster Wallace's words: they do not love us and just want us to give our attention or money or something, and that's sort of sad. Giving people back some of their agency and turning them back into creators, letting them imagine stuff, creating software, shaping software that then can shape their lives. That was the original idea — we unfortunately don't shape our software today; we're being shaped by software made by companies that want something from us.
Andrew McClintock: What's the most surprising thing that you've seen from how users use Wabi?
Eugenia Kuyda: I think the one thing that's really exciting to me is that people get really attached to their apps. Even if the app is not as perfect as something off of the App Store, because it's yours and it's tailored to you, you almost start treating it as a living organism; you keep pruning the tree. So it's like, "Now I have an app and can constantly update it. I can add a little bit here and add a little bit there." It's almost like a garden you're tending to. And people get very, very attached to that, so the little details matter. [...] I think the intentionality, what goes into it, it's almost like cooking your own food and then eating it. You treat it differently than just something bought, made at a store or in a can. Sometimes we call them home-cooked apps versus pre-made or frozen apps.
Andrew McClintock: Are agents like fast food or frozen food?
Eugenia Kuyda: I think all software should become agentic. We're more thinking about these kinds of UI shells, but the backend can be an agent, can be just a prompt to a model. Can be just more old-school software like some or some database-type app, but could be an agent behind the scenes. The idea with Irwin is that everything still needs a visual container for regular people to resonate, to come back to every day. It needs a visual container. If you don't have it, if every program you're using is some sort of an agent in a chatbot experience, it's not for a regular person. It's for programmers, for developers.
Andrew McClintock: Hearing you talk about the attachment people are having to these apps — would you say that you saw a similar pattern with Replika?
Eugenia Kuyda: Very weirdly, a super similar story here: if you have an emotional connection to something because you raise something, you raise your own Replika, you build your own app, you forgive the imperfections or if something's not working to a certain point. You're fine with some level of imperfection. The fact that it's yours overcomes this. And I think there's a lot of beauty in that. I think the world's very obsessed right now with better. Yet the most important things in life are not about better.
Andrew McClintock: What does growth and distribution mean in the AI age? Also, I love these super handmade, stop-motion videos on your IG getting tons of views — they have this very humanistic vibe to them.
Eugenia Kuyda: I think it's a question around what in this AI era is the humanistic side of technology brands. The last really big one was obviously Apple, then maybe the millennial era, Airbnb-type brands, but that's all from the previous era. So, what's today's version of that? Especially as there's so much slop. The millennials' polish look obviously also looks very sloppy and is kind of out.
People are tired of being sold some crap with dark patterns and fifty paywalls. They feel that there's this huge power — there's so much tech around and I think the early fascination with tech products of the early 2000s gave way to this insane amount of skepticism like "What's happening with the data? We're all depressed because we're scrolling the feed." You can have some of this agency back, build your own thing, make your own thing, express yourself, be weird, do what you want, make your own weird self, invite just five friends…
So what works is the quality of ideas. People can see that human touch. [...] It can be still built with AI, but that original idea people can sense: is it slop or is it truth? Coming from Agnes Martin's words: that pure undefended space in you, that is just translating some idea that exists in the universe to other people.
Andrew McClintock: What do you think about the SF scene today? You went through YC in 2015 — what would make the current cultural fabric of the city better?
Eugenia Kuyda: San Francisco is an extremely unique place…where you can come with nothing and just an idea, and you can be judged on the quality of your idea, your execution, and the way you can inspire people. You can come with nothing and raise millions of dollars and build something in a few months. And we see that, little kids going from zero, to thousands, to millions — quickly. And to that degree, I think it's a truly magical place and it's pretty meritocratic. [...] Of course, there are all the downfalls and whatnot, but still it's hard to imagine any other industry or any other place where you can make this insane jump where you can come from the middle of nowhere. I came from Russia. I didn't know anyone here. Next thing I know, I'm in YC. Next thing I know, we're raising money. And of course, it is hard, and there's a lot of luck involved, but still it's possible.
There are all these industry conversations in the AI space like around ARR or whatever, but we're not really having conversations about other things…I think there's a lot of opportunity you can uncover about how AI can truly unlock human potential. What does all this really mean or what different types of thinking exist? That's where a lot of conversations should be happening right now that are not.