Jake Harper

Squares always lose in the end. It's inevitable.

@WizLikeWizard @MollySOShea @sootworld_ @kobiefuller @upfrontvc heehee

@MollySOShea @sootworld_ @kobiefuller @upfrontvc New @freakthefilter look has dropped 🔥😍

The Ferrari of File Systems → Soot @sootworld_ 's $7.2M Seed Round: CEO Jake Harper, CTO Amol Kapoor, & Investor, @kobiefuller of @upfrontvc Soot, a spatial, self-organizing file system that revolutionizes how we interact with our data - in more technical terms, it's a consumer-grade vector database with a user-friendly GUI Full episode + resources linked below

In this episode of Sourcery, @MollySOShea sits down with Jake Harper (@freakthefilter) and Amol Kapoor (@theahura_)of @Soot, a spatial, self-organizing file system that revolutionizes how they interact with their data. Joining the group is Soot investor @kobiefuller, GP at @upfrontvc. Jake talks about Soot as a consumer-grade vector database with a user-friendly GUI, simplifying data navigation and making AI tooling accessible. He emphasizes the importance of beauty and user experience, aiming to empower and inspire users. Amol also highlights how the company prioritizes seamless user experience with advanced AI capabilities hidden behind the scenes. They aim to empower users with a spatial, self-organizing view of their data, enabling intuitive exploration and collaboration. From an investor’s perspective, Kobie believes Soot is a game-changer in how we interact with digital assets, emphasizing its spatial organization and intuitive design, and its ability to streamline content discovery, along with its potential to revolutionize file management. Soot's founders discuss how their platform is revolutionizing design workflows and empowering creatives to share their work in new ways. -- TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Introduction & Context (02:00) Kobe's Perspective on Soot (03:33) Jake's Explanation of Soot: (07:09) Emphasis on Beauty & Emotional Response (09:50) Team Background & Founding Story (12:30) Team Composition & Hiring (16:37) Soot Demo & Functionality (22:37) Kobe's User Testing Experience (25:24) Technical Aspects & Underlying AI (29:40) Graphics Performance & Design Decisions (33:20) Target Customer Profiles & Future Features (37:05) Soot as a Vector Database & User Feedback (38:23) The Rainforest Analogy & Search Efficiency (43:22) Design in Service of Technology (44:20) Closing Thoughts

Culture is a remix (sound on)

@WizLikeWizard Founder life = reading books on medieval illuminated manuscripts looking for UI references

VC life = randomly reading academic papers on immobilization of enzymes using polymer brushes 🤓

@dvassallo soot.com does this

A killer use case for AI would be to upload all my 58,000 photos and let the machine organize them, enhance them, select the best ones from dupes, etc.

@erica_wenger @spacecadet 💯

Best preseed VC firms you know? Tag them below!!👇 Lots of folks say preseed on website but they tend to want much more traction/just really do seed (have a friend raising & want to narrow down list for her)

@rsms Book two hours in the large private room at a Karaoke bar. At $7-$11 per person per hour, it's pretty affordable. Been our go-to for large private rooms in NYC for a while.

Looking to use a conference room in San Francisco (or south of SF within ~1h drive) tomorrow Sunday for a few hours. WeWork and Breather both have zero spaces available. Any creative ideas?

The creative process and specialized problem solving have identical signal paths. Speeding up the ideation/curation rate benefits all forms of creativity, whether to make an image or to solve more specialized analytical thinking.

This December, Ireland’s Edge returns to Dingle to present The Good Life / Slí Bheatha bringing together a compelling range of voices to explore how change has been and is being wrought in the world today. + more to be announced 🌙🐬

@mhdempsey The novice: Uses notes app for everything The student: Uses Notion+Roam+Evernote+..... The master: Uses notes app for everything

GPT-3 please generate a nice website that integrates a notion database into something beautiful so i can end this hellish experience.

lazyweb: what's the best way to make a notion database look nice/unique and not like...a notion database?

@lessin #2 is contentious because it is impossible/not meaningful to separate creation from distribution. As Marshal McLuhan famously said, 'the medium is the message'. Example: the impact of the CDJ on the music industry, and its widespread presence in club culture, emerged together.

Why you should be ‘default out’ on investing in ‘Generative AI’ companies for the next few years.

@lessin The model for many cos building generative AI tools seems closer to apparel brands than traditional tech. Differentiated brand and user segment (AI writing for fiction, or for marketing), but undifferentiated raw materials (GPT3 being like a cotton hoodie in this metaphor).

Preview of @VMindAI Fast Stable Diffusion — 4,300% faster @StabilityAI Stable Diffusion (1024x1024 images, 100 steps). DM or c@vmindai.com for early access.

@f_j_j_ @alex @chrismessina @GaryMarcus @SchmidhuberAI @emilyriehl @asyapluggedin @VMindAI We're building the fastest AI compute infrastructure in the world — leaps above any public technology, and radically more energy efficient. (The images above give a hint.) We aim to become our biggest customers, to build safe AGI. We can't wait to show it to the world. VMind.

@Plinz @miguelisolano The cdj did this for music. Democratizing ideation leads to greater surprise in the output.

I don't think that there is danger that creators of digital content will be replaced by generative AI. Being able to create with the help of machines has never led to less human creativity, it just enabled the next level of creation. Content is software, and can never be enough

@Mappletons A really great model for the solution to ‘collapsed context in a screen’ is the self organizing information spaces in nature. A rainforest soundscape is a highly performant multiplexed UI. Machine learning clustering algorithms can replicate aspects of this structure.

Bought a little £30 laser printer to print off all the research papers I’ve “read” but can’t fully remember because The Screen is one big smoosh of collapsed context. Already feels different to have physical artefacts hanging around. Bullish on tactile objects you can touch.

@KaliYuga_ai Or you could use soot.com. A visual filesystem with Stable Diffusion built into the search bar.

@defnotbeka @rsnous cultureisaremix.soot.com

what is the most interesting, weird, novel OS or UI you've encountered past or present?

New collab 🎉 This one may take some explaining, but it starts from a prison cell and a potentially simple question: “What kind of house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot box for almost thirty years dream of?” 1/

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