Des Traynor - Real Talk about AI and Software

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money.
Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our podcasts including edited transcripts, show notes and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of PositiveSum and the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of PositiveSum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:24)
My guest today is Des Traynor. Des is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Intercom, a customer service solution that helps businesses answer product questions, offer instant support and automate sales. The business was founded in 2011 and their products operate with 25,000 businesses, including the likes of Amazon, Lyft and Atlassian.
Our conversation is roughly split in half. First, we talk about AI and how it's actually changing businesses like Intercom through products such as their open AI powered bot called Fin. We then talk about Des's views as an investor, which includes an answer about software that I'll remember for a long time. Please enjoy my conversation with Des Traynor.
I've been so excited for this because I think it's the perfect excuse to talk to a real practitioner, builder, entrepreneur about what it's been like to feel the explosion of AI and its impact, both exciting, maybe even scary on an existing product, an existing software product that's always been very cutting edge in terms of its architecture, etc. And how you approach this new opportunity slash threat. Everyone I think is a bomb that went off in the technology scene. And I'd love you to begin by just giving me your high level thoughts on what it's been like to see ChatGPT, GPT-4, all the open source models, all this explosion of new technology through the lens of an existing, really successful software business.

**Des Traynor** (3:48)
It's been a good roller coaster, a fun one. We have dabbled in AI since 2016 We've had AI products live in market. I think the world changed with ChatGPT, both capabilities of what AI could do change and also I think people's willingness to engage with a bot was a lot different after their first experience of ChatGPT. For us, I met with our head of ML, I think the day after ChatGPT dropped and we had a pretty long conversation where he was pretty firm that this is the single biggest transformation he's seen in AI and he's spent his entire career in it. The more we played with what we realized was, hey, this thing is very conversational. It can learn, it can summarize, it can extract the main pieces and given a query and given a set of information, it can actually propose an answer.