Shadowing Practice: Kortex: The $3 Million Dollar Mistake - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Cortex, the $3 million mistake.
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One of the things I started thinking about was like, what are the problems with Cortex?
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Like, we can't make any step forward because we're just like marching in place.
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And then the comments coming in and everything else is like, what are we doing?
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Let's set these goals.
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Let's make them really aggressive and see what happens.
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And we did that.
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And we saw that the whole car fell apart.
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We need desktop.
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We need light mode.
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Light mode, yes.
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Because we could, like, that's how slow we were going is like it was difficult to get light mode out of all things.
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And so we threw away the one and only advantage that we really had as a startup, which is moving fast.
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We haven't tried.
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Why don't we just try?
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Like surely if we do those things, we can rebuild the entirety of Cortex and more in much shorter time.
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Literally three weeks into being in Japan, that hypothesis turned out to be true.
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In terms of like rebranding from Cortex to Eden, what comes to mind for you?
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It's like a search engine for your memories.
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I just went in and searched pink sweater
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and it resurfaced every single frame where someone was wearing a pink sweater at the exact timestamp.
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This is insane.
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I haven't seen this before.
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The second that you think you know what you're doing, you're kind of fucked.
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And it's like, I don't know how to freaking manage a team, dude.
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I don't know the first thing that goes into this.
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So like me going into it, as long as I saw some form of progress, I'm like, oh yeah, we're actually doing something.
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Success is just like a series of perhaps well -calculated risks, but like a series of big risks.
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Because as humans, we're very prone to remaking the same mistakes over and over again.
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Well, yeah, we're here to talk about why cortex failed.
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Yeah.
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$3 million mistake.
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That's the title of this video.
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Very attention -grabbing and polarizing. But yeah.
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On the topic of cortex being a mistake, I don't think it was actually a mistake, but I want to hear your take on that.
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Yeah.
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I mean, you know my philosophy of mistakes you have to make them in order to actually improve.
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Yeah.
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So do you see it as a mistake?
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I see it as a series of necessary mistakes for us to get where we need to go.
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And fundamentally, I don't think the idea of building
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Cortex, the second brain app, was a bad one, but there were a lot of mistakes
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that we made as first -time founders that went into Cortex that definitely can be categorized as mistakes.
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Yeah, if you follow me, you know, I talked for about Cortex nonstop for
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However many months or even years and then just stopped all of a sudden and then people are like, oh What's happening to Cortex?
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Where's Cortex?
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a lot of things happened and we decided to pivot
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and Build a new app Eden so that sparks a ton of questions of like, okay, why didn't you stay building Cortex?
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Why are you doing Eden?
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Why did you rebrand?
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The first thing there is like where we stopped with Cortex wasn't our vision for it.
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We kind of just stopped there because we were forced to for the reasons we're going to talk about.
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Yeah.
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But to frame even further and to say this early on in the video, Cortex users, you probably already know what's happening.
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You've gotten emails about it if you don't know what's happening, starting Monday, the week right before the Monday,
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right before Black Friday, we're going to start rolling out Eden to you.
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So expect an email on that.
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Log into the app if you don't get an email
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because you'll get a banner in the app to transfer everything over if you want to.
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But for people who have not used
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Cortex, have been hearing about Eden or very excited about it, Black Friday weekend from Friday to Monday,
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we're going to try and open it to the public and see if things are okay.
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Please take note, this is early access.
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This isn't like any kind of public launch Cortex users.
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It's not going to be up to par, like having desktop app and mobile and everything else with Cortex.
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So just please keep an eye on all the information.
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But what was Cortex?
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Let's start at the beginning.
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Like the very beginning?
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Yeah, the very beginning.
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How did we meet?
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For context, for people who have no idea who we are, I'm Matt, one of the co -founders of Cortex and now Eden.
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I'm Ari, same story.
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Yeah, he's the technical guy, deeply technical guy, our CTO.
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I'm the product guy.
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And we are both, well, for me, were, was, but we're both students at the University of Toronto.
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I was in computer engineering, he's in computer science.
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And we both kind of have a background of like, wanting to do something entrepreneurial or wanting to do something that's like, not the conventional route.
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For me, I went through the first couple of years of school in university,
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kind of just like pretty disillusioned with studying and going down the traditional computer engineering route, like getting a degree and then just getting a job.
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Pretty early on in university, I decided to go part -time and then take on a bunch of odd jobs
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and doing like random things outside of school.
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Long story short, I ended up hopping through a series of different startups,
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first initially doing content and then contracting as someone doing demo videos for this other startup.
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And that was right before I had met you.
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Story for how that happened was that when I was at the last startup working as a front -end person,
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I realized that I did not want to do that for the rest of my life.
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I decided two days before meeting you, I'm going to write an Apple note.
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And in that note, okay, I'll start with ghostwriting.
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I'll start with like finding clients online
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and then eventually I'll systemize this process into like a software because I had learned some software skills and Eventually,
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I'll probably partner with Dan Coe and then your friend
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Dakota Robertson happened to be running a ghostwriting cohort halfway through that call
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You basically said offhandedly that you were building a software
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and I was like just in my brain I'm like there's no there's no way there's no way right like and
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And then and then I unmuted myself in front of everybody there were like 50 strangers there.
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I just like decided you know what like
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I might as well take a shot nothing
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but bad can come out of this and then I just asked like what software are you building?
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Yeah, and it turns out you you were working on an idea that was very very very similar
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So then I'm just I just like start Shamelessly barraging you in the zoom call with like oh like uh
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Here's like everything I've worked on before I can help you with
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that like like here hear like some previous links for things that I've worked on.
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Well, the thing is like, sorry, there is that entire time I was thinking like, okay, okay.
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Like I've heard this before.
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I have a lot.
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Yeah, I'm sure you have.
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A lot of it doesn't bear any fruit.
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And so like me being in the spotlight on the call, I was just like, okay,
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yeah, I'll give you my telegram and we'll talk after there.
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Yeah.
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I remember Dakota, I'm, I'm so sorry.
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If you're listening to this
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Dakota, I'm so sorry for interrupting your thing.
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And I'm pretty sure he probably got a little annoyed when I was doing that as well.
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Because he was like, all right, I'll connect you guys on Telegram later.
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You can sort it out offline.
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He was kind of just like, all right, this guy is derailing the conversation.
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Let's get this back on track.
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But then me having gotten your Telegram, I was like, oh, fuck, yes, this is an opportunity.
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So then I remember right after the call, I can literally pull it up right now.
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If we scroll all the way back up, I just barraged you with messages.
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And then you were like not interested at first.
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Well, yeah, then I sent you because I thought we were doing everything right.
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Like this was our mine and Joey's first dive into software.
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Yeah.
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And we just hired a developer off of Upwork.
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Yeah.
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And we're like, this is what we want.
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It wasn't really fleshed out.
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I mean, this entire process, this entire podcast is going to show like what iteration actually is.
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And it's a lot.
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Yeah.
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But yeah, I sent you that and what we've been doing.
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And then I kind of just, to summarize what the message back was, it was like, yeah, you need to burn this all down.
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It sucks.
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And then I'm like, oh, okay, now I'm listening.
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Over that weekend, you and Joey had decided to fire that guy, bring me on.
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And then I think at that point, maybe you started to take it more seriously.
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And then you incorporated the company.
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and then the name
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Cortex came about and then you injected like the first amount of basically seed funding.
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You brought me onto the call.
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I saw what the guy had and then TLDR for the technical people, that guy had spent like five months building basically a CRUD app,
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which Ari can pull off in like two hours.
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And now Ari could do in like 30 seconds.
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That's just what I did now.
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So, yeah, to give Ari some limelight here, this is the most cracked engineer I know.
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Well, I don't know many.
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No, no. No, 100%.
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I think it's like, I know some crazy cracked people.
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I know people working at Autopilot and Tesla, like meetings with Elon Musk and so on.
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I think he is at least on the same level.
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We need to keep him quiet.
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He's going to be getting a bunch of emails with offers.
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I'd say technical skills -wise, I wouldn't say I'm super cracked or anything, but the thing that I do have going for me is...
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I would disagree, but...
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It's like, the thing that really makes a difference, especially in startups, is just persistence.
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Like, going into it, like, my first attempt at startups, like, I had zero knowledge about any sort of,
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like, web development or front -end facing things.
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Yeah, and then you decided to build a text editor.
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Yes.
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That's an insane first project to take on.
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Yeah.
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That's kind of how we met.
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My conditioning from a very young age, because of my parents, was that, you know, anything's possible.
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You can do whatever you want.
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Total opposite.
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What my parents told me.
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Props to our parents.
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They always made it seem like, okay, you always have a fallback with us.
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So don't worry about being safe.
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Try experimenting.
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Try something crazy.
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Because, you know, you always have a home with us, so why not?
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Aw, that's sweet.
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And my dad always put this business aspect into my head where he was like, you know, even if you like sell a toothpick,
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if you can sell it to enough people, you'll make a lot of money.
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That's a great analogy.
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Start small, start with whatever, you'll make it work somehow, right?
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I went into an incubator program.
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And the incubator program told us to structure things in a way that I didn't agree with,
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where they wanted us to think about the market, think about...
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Right, like the business proposal and project revenue before you had a product.
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Cash projections without a product ever being built.
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Classic.
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I do not agree with that philosophy, but maybe it works for different kinds of startups.
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We ended up just building a prototype, brought it to them, and they just told us, you know what, you're too young.
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You should come back when you're about to graduate.
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And the prototype that you had built was Mbed Notes, right?
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It was Mbed Notes.
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It was a note -taking app.
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It was a note -taking app.
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That was my first ever attempt at building something outside of school, just in the hopes of turning it into a real product.
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And when you get a feedback from people who are much senior than you
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that you should just come back when you're older, you're too young.
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It's kind of like, it feels bad.
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It feels really bad.
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It's like, what do you mean I'm too young?
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It was because you weren't a fourth year student.
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Yes, I wasn't graduating.
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And to me, that just seems dumb.
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Like there shouldn't be any age requirement to like going and doing stuff.
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So I took that advice and I said, okay, you know what?
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You want me to be a fourth year student?
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I combined my second and third year education into one.
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Yeah, he took all eight credits.
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It was eight credits in one year.
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Yes.
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Which is ridiculous.
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Finished as much as I could.
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I'm like, okay, I'm back.
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I'm a fourth year now.
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And that was a few weeks before you met us.
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Yes.
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I was doing this while I was working at a different company called Flip.
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And I did software engineering for them for a year just to see what industry feels like.
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And towards the tail end of that...
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Like a co -op program, right?
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Yeah, a co -op program.
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Towards the tail end of that, Ian was already working with you guys.
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Yeah.
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So for context, we have a team member called Ian.
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He was one of the first people that I had kind of brought on.
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Ian was initially responsible for building out the first couple of editor features for Cortex
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and the problems that he would run into in trying to build an editor, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds,
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he would often go to Ari because Ari had worked on an editor project for his first startup.
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So then after consulting Ari several times, Ian just thought, wait, why don't you just join the company?
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I guess this is where we start to get into it.
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What were the mistakes that we made with Vortex?
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The very first mistake we made was how we structured our team.
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I decided like, oh, like let's let's let's bring on this person and then we'll make him fun and lead and Well,
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the the thing about like one I come from the quote -unquote one person business background
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or like me and my editor after that
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And it's like I don't know how to freaking manage a team dude I don't know the first thing
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that goes into this
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So like me going into it as long as I saw some form of progress.
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I'm like, oh, yeah, we're actually doing something it was compartmentalized based on tech stack
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and that was fundamentally the wrong approach because Because a year or two into doing that,
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we realized that way of doing things at an early stage startup is so slow.
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You're structuring your team the way big tech companies structure their teams for the wrong reasons.
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It makes much more sense for every single person on the team to be laser focused on product.
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To be laser focused on what is it that we're actually trying to build? and can we get product market fit?
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And what that translates to is everybody should be full stack.
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Everybody on the team should be working on features, not parts of a feature to serve another person on the team.
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Let me make this tangible to the non -tech person.
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What this means in a sense is, okay, as a startup or a small team who don't really know what they're doing yet,
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especially coming from our backgrounds, is like iteration is one of the most important things.
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We need to change things.
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We need to test things.
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We don't know what's, again, with the theme of this podcast being like mistakes are the only way to improve or you can't improve without mistakes.
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It's like we had to put something out there, see how people used it, see how we used it.
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And then from there, it's like, okay, this isn't really going to work.
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Let's rip it out.
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But then the person that built that is like, okay, we can't keep doing this because then it throws everything else off
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and introduces all these other bugs that is like cross domain rather than the thing
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that the single person is working on
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and it just slows us down rather than what we're trying to do
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which is speed up to get to a point where we have something that's good, right?
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That's the entire thing.
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As a startup, the number one advantage that you have is that you're small, you can move fast.
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And it's like, why will these big players not catch up to you?
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Or like, what do you have that they don't?
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It's speed.
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And fundamentally, we structured our team and our technology, which you can get into, in a way that was antithetical to moving fast.
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And so we threw away the one and only advantage that we really had as a startup, which is moving fast.
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Yeah.
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So the AC Cortex, it works.
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There's some bugs.
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Sure.
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Those bugs get fixed.
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But then like we get the emails of like, hey, you guys said this update was coming.
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Yeah.
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Where is it?
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And that's a month later.
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And we made a big mistake of like,
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we had this like ambitious goal that we set because we were getting to this point where it's like, we're not moving fast enough.
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We need to like push harder with the structure that we had, which wasn't going to work
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but we're like okay we need mobile we need desktop we need desktop we need light mode
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because we could like that's how that's how slow
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we were going is like it was difficult to get light mode out of all things
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and there were like a few other things
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but like the big ones is like mobile desktop
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and mobile's a huge one for a note -taking app that's another thing with cortex is like we had 80 ,000 users,
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but we were so siloed that the amount, the speed at which we could build things, our mobile experience,
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which is like how 80 % of people are going to find you
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if they're watching YouTube on your phone or they see a tweet of mine or Instagram, they go to the Cortex website,
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they sign up, and then they're like, they log into the Cortex web version and they're like, okay, this is crap, and then they leave.
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And it's like, so sure, we have this many users
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but how many did we lose along the way a lot we started out only free yeah
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and then introduced paid tier and the paid tier like didn't even make sense
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because we were a note -taking app only yeah only did
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we start like actually seeing a good amount of revenue
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when we introduced the ai feature but the ai feature is like the usp of
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that is oh you can use all models yeah in there you can use any model
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so you can technically quote -unquote replace chat gpt claw Gemini, etc. And you can reference notes.
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And it's like, that is a big selling point, but it's nothing like fancy.
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It's nothing that's going to take us.
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It's nothing that you don't get in like, say, Notion or even in Claude built in now.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And so we're at this point where we're like, we aren't a compelling app.
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Like, it's good.
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It works.
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I do all my writing in it.
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I like it.
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I couldn't see myself living without it.
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But it's like, there's nothing special this doesn't feel like a startup that we're building.
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It feels like we're just rebuilding Obsidian with an AI chat latched on.
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And I didn't want to face that for the longest time.
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People would comment that.
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And I'd just be like, no, that's not what it is because I have this different image of it in my head.
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And I spent too much time justifying that.
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That was my mistake is we should have called it quits earlier.
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People see Cortex, but then they're like, okay, what about mobile?
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What about desktop?
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Hey, I haven't heard from you in a month.
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Where's the update?
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And it's like, we're just stuck on maintenance and bug fixes.
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We can't make any step forward because we're just marching in place.
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There were also many, many deeper underlying technical decision problems.
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For example, literally the choices that we made for authentication, for how we scaled hosting,
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etc. I think you should probably get into it better than I can.
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I came into Cortex a couple months after it was already set up.
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And I was just brought on for initially engineering.
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It was just part -time engineering work.
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So I come in
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and the way the stack is set up looked very similar
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to what I've seen at other big tech companies where we had our own open source authentication system hosted
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and our own EC2 instances.
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And we have guys running around with Terraform scripts
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and a lot of other stuff like that where a lot of things
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that we decided to build ourselves yeah that was the fundamental problem
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and I've seen like even mid -sized companies
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you have like groups of five to six people whose full -time job is just handling all of
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that stuff and we're a team of five to six people doing
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that plus building the product so to me looking at
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that I just went okay this is gonna be a bit of a challenge yeah it's tough
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and you can't back out at that point yeah you can't back out because people start using it.
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And it's like, it's like, um, so just, just to like nail into like one example.
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Right.
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Um, and for, for the non -technical people, like authentication was one of these problems for the non -technical people,
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authentication is just logging in, signing up.
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Very, very basic stuff.
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Like you expect any app to just have, you just log in and sign up.
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Like what could, what could be so hard with that?
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Sign up with Google.
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What could be so hard about that?
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Right. And like.
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The answer is it shouldn't be that hard for a startup.
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It should be really, really simple unless you try to build it yourself.
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And I think it's a mistake that a lot of first -time founders make where you think to yourself,
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it would be very valuable if we as a startup were to own all of this IP, if we were to control and own everything.
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But all of that and trying to scale prematurely or trying to worry about like,
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oh, I want to own the IP so I'm not relying on third -party vendors way too early on,
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translates to sinking literally thousands of dev hours on building those things yourselves
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and not spending that time on working on the actual product.
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That's the thing is like when I hear you guys say this,
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it's still in my head as someone who's never seen the code or done anything with the code is like,
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okay, well, how hard can it be to set up?
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I think that puts it into perspective is people hear this and it was like, oh, well, that's like a stupid mistake.
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Like it shouldn't have been that much of a problem.
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That's the thing is like entire companies are built solving authentication.
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Yeah.
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That shows how much of a problem it can be if you do it yourself is you're in essence,
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And it's like you become an authentication company somewhat at that point.
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But now you're split between what you're trying to build and building authentication.
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And that's just one of the pieces.
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Well, it's like if the product is a second brain or what we envisioned it to be beyond that,
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and now we're doing something that another company does, especially as a small team, then it's like, what kind of company are we?
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We say we're a second brain or whatever company, but we're spending all of our time.
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Does our time reflect that?
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No. So that's like the problem of it.
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Yeah.
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And like authentication is like one of many, many examples.
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Another one is like trying to build a sync engine ourselves. And like.
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Because offline mode was the other thing we requested.
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Because since we envisioned it as so much more than just a second brain, by the time we had the second brain portion of it done,
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people were like, oh, well, Obsidian has offline.
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Like, well, thanks for just like ruining our entire day.
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Like, we know like come on like that's not the only selling point of this
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but there's a point there yeah
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and it's like it shouldn't have been it should it would have been difficult
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but it shouldn't have been
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that difficult shouldn't have taken like notion as an example everyone has been like crying to them about offline mode
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and what four years later now they finally have it
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and it's like the way that we were building it we were heading down down
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that direction as well yeah and the aggressive deadlines thing
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that was my bad well
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i was all for it yeah the thing is like oh okay
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we like we're gonna make some progress here yeah the way
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i saw things moving was like okay maybe
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we just don't have enough pressure on us maybe we're just like too comfortable
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because one of the things like as a result of us
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structuring things in a more big tech way was the mindsets
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of our team became more big tech where it's like okay
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it's a nine to five yeah what's wrong is at a big tech company the product market fit is guaranteed
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it's stable the income is guaranteed the profits guaranteed like you know
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that the product will exist the next day at a startup
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that's not necessarily the case your number one mission as a startup is to find
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at least in the early stage is to find product market fit
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so that people so that you actually make something people want
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and that's the fundamental thing
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that like we did not spend our time on like focusing on the fact
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that we haven't yet built something that people actually want.
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And so I thought, okay, we need to do something different, right?
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Let's set these goals.
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Let's make them really aggressive and see what happens.
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Because then once you, once you like push it to the speed limit, you start to see what things are breaking.
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What can break.
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Yeah.
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And we did that and we saw that the whole car fell apart.
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Like what's the worst thing imaginable for a note taking app?
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You write stuff and it disappears.
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Yeah.
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And we caused a lot of that by trying to build our own sink in.
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Yeah.
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And the other thing is like we were confident in
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that not happening and then it happened
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and we're like oh my god like we don't like this is like the cardinal mistake
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that we shouldn't have made and so those come in
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and we split attention again and it's like as we continue to change things
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and we're digging ourselves deeper into this tech hole
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that is already causing problems it's like they just keep coming up
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and going back to like the very beginning it's like that wasn't our vision for the app.
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So we're further solidifying ourselves as this thing that we didn't mean to be.
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I guess all of this leads up to me
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and Ari getting really frustrated over time with just not being able to make actual progress on the product itself.
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And we decided to take a trip to Japan.
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Leading up to the trip, we've had several conversations.
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We had many, many conversations between ourselves and with other people on the team.
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Like, hey, what do you think about rebuilding?
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What do you think about like just like throwing everything, not throwing everything away, but like just like putting everything aside for a bit
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and try rebuilding in a drastically different way that is much leaner,
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much quicker to iterate on and not like entrenched in all these open source
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or like build it yourself technologies that take insanely long to iterate on.
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But then Ari and I were both on that trip and then we decided,
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you know what, because it's like kind of like a vacation to everybody on the team, it just looks like, oh,
439
we're just flying out to like have fun for like a month or whatever.
440
But then to us, it was like, you know what, because we have this opportunity anyways,
441
while we're overseas, let's just in secret from the rest of the team, try to rebuild it.
442
Like we haven't tried.
443
Why don't we just try?
444
Yeah.
445
Surely it can't be that hard if we were to choose technologies that we're more familiar with
446
outsourcing a lot of the problems and abstracting away a lot of the problems to like third -party providers.
447
Like surely if we do those things we can rebuild the entirety of Cortex and more in much shorter time.
448
Like we just started out with that hypothesis
449
and literally three weeks into being in Japan that hypothesis turned out to be true.
450
So it went to show that like we should have scrapped things way, way, way, way earlier.
451
Because if we can do it in three weeks at that point, what's stopping someone else from doing it in a month as well?
452
Yeah.
453
Well, that's the other thing is we would see all of these like great apps coming out
454
and we'd send it in the group chat and be like, oh, this is cool.
455
Yeah.
456
And like we'd get inspiration, like a short hit of inspiration, but then it's like, uh, we can't - We can't do it.
457
Really compete.
458
Like we just knew every time we saw an app come out and do really well that it's like, oh, we were planning on doing that
459
but like we were stuck in the mud like yeah it's gonna be six months before we can get on
460
that it wasn't originally planned to be eden
461
we were just planning on i guess replacing cortex yeah we were exactly yeah
462
so aside from the technical issues with cortex we were kind of in that
463
a lot there were there are a lot of tech companies
464
that have the blurple branding like blue slash purple yeah glowy gradients yes uh dark theme yeah i wanted
465
that because my branding is black and white and
466
so i'm like we're going to be launching it to our audience
467
and all of this other stuff
468
and like we once we decided oh we're rebuilding
469
it we actually got to take a good look at what we had built
470
and be like okay cortex doesn't look that good people like it
471
because it resonates with them and they're more of like that dark techie vibe
472
but we're not reaching the audience for the vision
473
that we were going to achieve so
474
that led to like okay maybe this isn't just a replacing cortex maybe this is a rebrand as a whole
475
but it's an entirely different tech stack
476
so why don't we actually start over like this is us literally just start a new company clean slate yeah
477
but this also imposed some limitations is like the Cortex users trusted us so much.
478
How do we, I guess, make it up to them?
479
How do we get everything that they've been looking forward to for so long into this incredible experience?
480
And we may be hyping it up now.
481
As a reminder, when we roll out to Cortex users and open for Black Friday weekend, just know that that's early access.
482
Treat it as beta.
483
It's only going to be web.
484
Mobile will come out when it comes out.
485
We'll say that rather than giving a date, which is something that we've learned is if you have a deadline
486
or if you have a public date you want to give out, push it back by like two weeks.
487
Just give yourself some breathing room so you're not, yeah.
488
Eden, we think, is really cool, really good.
489
Like we'll go over features, but with that, there's obviously going to be things that can be improved.
490
So if you're joining during early access,
491
give us feedback and know that you're coming in on something that isn't its full potential,
492
but is much further along the path than Cortex ever was.
493
So do you, in terms of like rebranding from Cortex to Eden, what comes to mind for you?
494
What were the decisions behind that?
495
One of the things
496
that comes to mind is it's really hard to get across
497
what a second reign is to anybody who's not in like the productivity niche.
498
It makes sense as a concept, but as like a process, it doesn't.
499
Yeah.
500
Right.
501
Well, one, I guess, good bit of context here is that while we were building
502
Cortex, like I was trying to do what I do best in building community, doing writing cohorts to educate people to use
503
Cortex well, creating tutorials on the Cortex YouTube.
504
And a lot of them were fairly popular, but when people would watch them, they would get questions and support a lot of like
505
Okay, well, like I have to use tags.
506
I have to use backlinks.
507
I have to connect things like I'm not really getting what I have to do here
508
Part of the original vision for me was also just like what is a second brain
509
if you actually boil it down to like what what function it serves?
510
Well, we think about like well, you can think about what a brain your first brain does it stores and retrieves information, right?
511
That that's ultimately what a brain is good at doing like a storing and retrieving information really really quickly
512
You store information so that you can quickly retrieve it later
513
so that you can use it in your projects so
514
that you can use it to Create content or so
515
that you can use it to write books so that you can write you can write research papers write video scripts
516
Use it for any kind of creative or information related endeavor another thing with that is like it's a curated space
517
Yeah, it's not like yeah, you can google search.
518
Yeah, I can ask AI Yeah, you can tap into the entire like water hose
519
that is the internet of information but this is the place of like your favorite ideas, the ones that mean something to you,
520
the one that you saw and you're like, I need to save this for a project I use later.
521
But if that's not findable or usable, then you're back at ground zero and you either need to come across that idea again,
522
or you need to somehow type in the right keyword into Google
523
or AI in order to get that idea back to you.
524
And another way to put it in my mind, which is just like, it's like a search engine for your memories.
525
It's like you can just really, really easily, whenever you come across a video that you like, someone says something that you like,
526
or a podcast that you like, a blog post that you like, just hit a single shortcut, not have to think about anything,
527
and it's just saved somewhere.
528
And then when you want to resurface the ideas, you can just save, you can just search by exactly what you remember.
529
So for example, oh, I remember like Danco said that one thing about one person business, and I just hit one keyboard shortcut,
530
search up like Danco one person business or whatever.
531
And it's the exact frame or the exact moment from the video that I remember.
532
Not just every moment from the internet where Danco talks about this.
533
It's the one where I saved because the way
534
that he worded it there is the way
535
that really made it click for me and the way that I want to reference when I'm writing.
536
So it's almost like the search engine for your memories.
537
And I think about that and I compare it to what
538
Cortex was and I was like, it's so different.
539
It's manual process.
540
It's tags and back.
541
Yeah, yeah.
542
And it just felt like
543
if this was the original vision then why are we still stuck on this
544
so Eden for me is like okay well what do creative what sparks the word creative
545
or artistic or some other things of that nature
546
and we started brainstorming names
547
but the branding we knew had to be brighter it had to like fall into that space
548
and it had to be we had to be able to see it getting into millions of people's hands yeah like
549
Cortex for us even though Obsidian did great it's like we don't really see
550
that like cortex like do you hear
551
that as like a household name oh what do you take notes in cortex
552
it's like i don't really want to use
553
that it's it's also it's also just like every single time
554
i put it in front of someone like put the actual app in front of someone
555
and just anecdotally especially
556
when i did this with like some of my my uh friends who are girls like
557
if i would put it in front of them immediately their reaction is like oh
558
this doesn't look like something i would use well we're we were trying to build something special as well like
559
if we would have had the mobile app
560
and would have been called it like cortex notes
561
it's a note -taking app go in take notes oh cool ai chat tacked on
562
but since we were like in this state of dissonance of like we're not a note -taking app
563
but our product reflects
564
that our messaging around it is like oh
565
it's this thing really cool system yeah you store all your knowledge
566
we over complicated it to make it more novel than it was
567
because we knew we needed to build something more novel and we were marketing the product as more novel when it wasn't.
568
So that was like a point of confusion.
569
Which leads to what's actually novel about Eden.
570
Yeah.
571
So one other thing is you mentioned in the second brain process, like being able to capture store information and retrieve information.
572
Like you're big on the search feature.
573
I'm big on the canvas feature because I'm always viewing things from the lens of like, how am I going to use this in my workflow?
574
And if I'm not able to write in it every morning and like navigate that seamlessly with search involved.
575
It's like, okay, well, would I use this?
576
Because I don't use notes to write in because it doesn't serve that function.
577
So yeah, we didn't really explain features.
578
You said capture anything with keyboard shortcut, retrieve anything with...
579
Yeah.
580
So I think like fundamentally for me, what it boiled down to like the vision I originally had for Cortex and now
581
that we are actually carrying forward to Eden was like just
582
a really seamless way to capture anything at a moment's notice
583
and then recall exactly what you want later thinking about
584
that problem i boiled it down to well why don't we also just build like
585
aside from like a really good capture system, a really, really good search system.
586
And so that's one of the really cool new things that we've built with Eden, which is a really, really, really powerful search engine.
587
So to give more context, what the search allows you to do is it allows you to search across not just like text,
588
which is what most search engines do.
589
It allows you to search across literally specific visual frames in any footage that you've ever captured.
590
So for example, the prototype that Ari showed me, he uploaded a bunch of episodes of RandomAnime.
591
And I just went in and searched pink sweater.
592
And it resurfaced every single frame where someone was wearing a pink sweater at the exact timestamp.
593
And I was just like, holy shit.
594
This is insane.
595
I haven't seen this before.
596
YouTube doesn't even do that.
597
Google search doesn't do that.
598
Like no finder app or search app or note -taking app for that matter,
599
like has a search this granular that takes me to the exact point that I want.
600
There are some that we discovered after we built it, but we're not going to name them.
601
Yeah.
602
And they're $600 a month.
603
Oh yeah.
604
That's ridiculous.
605
Per terabyte.
606
Per terabyte.
607
Yeah.
608
Yeah.
609
It's ridiculous pricing.
610
But even if they do exist,
611
usually each company solves one fragmented part of the entire creative workflow, right?
612
Search is only one of the parts.
613
There's also capturing anything really easily, which is like, I just want a single keyboard shortcut where I'm looking at a YouTube video,
614
boom, press a keyboard shortcut, it's done.
615
Or if I'm not someone who likes using keyboard shortcuts, I can just copy the link, go into the app, paste it, and boom, it's done.
616
The phrasing here that I think a lot of people will resonate with, but we may not say very much,
617
is like just that it's a drive for anything.
618
It's a drive for all media that's transcribed.
619
Like as a creator, that is such a magical thing.
620
It's like any YouTube video I paste is not only downloaded, which you have to go and get a sketchy app to do that right now,
621
but it's also transcribed.
622
And you can read it right there.
623
And you can search the frames of it and the transcript of it.
624
Now that's just YouTube like think three hour long podcast incredible tool like
625
that salt that could be an app in and of itself
626
Yeah The second is like Instagram reels
627
Where can you actually download those and watch the video outside of Instagram and have them transcribed?
628
Yeah Tweets with a sub stack articles for context there for like our mobile app
629
One thing that you can do is like you're watching an Instagram reel
630
You just click share and you send it to the Eden app
631
And then it'll save the video and download it into your workspace in whatever folder you choose.
632
And then everything in that video will be transcribed and searchable.
633
So even if it's like a specific style, like a specific visual style, like you search cinematic moody,
634
it'll take you to the specific styles that you're looking for later when you're actually doing work in the workspace.
635
Yeah.
636
But now think of it like this.
637
It's like if you use AI, you know that one of the big problems is context and
638
when you're trying to help it help you like brainstorm stuff like how a landing page is structured
639
or teach you like you uh save a reel
640
because you're like oh this is great i want to emulate this structure
641
and pull some things from it now you have like i can create a folder of best reels yeah
642
and i can literally at mention that folder in the chat yeah
643
and be like break down what works about all these reels yeah you can't chat with the reel anywhere else
644
or youtube video
645
And it's like that is like a huge missing piece with AI.
646
And when you can, usually you're only chatting with the transcript.
647
You're not chatting with the visual information.
648
Whereas the AI chat, and this is something that Ari worked on recently as well, like what it allows you to do is it not just,
649
you're not just in our AI chat, you're not just chatting with the transcript of the videos.
650
You're chatting with the visual information.
651
So you can do things like,
652
oh, break down the shots in this YouTube video and explain like why it worked or why it's visually appealing.
653
Why is the hook in this video or in this reel visually appealing?
654
That's where Canvas comes into play is like, so Canvas, you think Miro, you think mind mapping, you think collage, you think other things.
655
But the chat interface is like one dimensional.
656
Like you're having one chat, you have to copy paste things in and out of it.
657
If you want to clear the context and have something else, and you create another chat.
658
So a canvas feature where you can drag PDFs, YouTube videos, reels, anything in your own MP4 files.
659
Yeah.
660
If you're a YouTube, like it's a Dropbox replacement.
661
So you store all of your video files in there.
662
If you need to find B -roll, you search for a specific shot.
663
Boom.
664
It pops up.
665
You clip that out, send it to your editor.
666
Good to go.
667
But you upload those as well.
668
So imagine that I have like my raw filmed YouTube video.
669
I put that on the canvas.
670
I put one of the better YouTube videos of mine on the canvas.
671
I put a few reels on there.
672
I put my brand guidelines, other things.
673
I can connect all of those to an AI chat, so they're pulled in as context, ask it whatever I want,
674
like break down this video and replace it with something from this video, so on and so forth.
675
And then I can connect any AI chat to any individual item, right?
676
It's kind of free form visual spatial AI, which for creatives, I think that's a big thing.
677
I've been using it every week for my newsletters
678
and it's like kind of liberating to not have to open a pane now
679
because like if I just want to take a little idea, boom, create a note in there,
680
jot it down there, drag that around to where I'm writing the newsletter in the canvas.
681
If I have to research something with AI, add an AI node, ask it.
682
The other thing that it's helpful with is I don't have to take much manual notes anymore
683
because a lot of my ideas come from YouTube videos or audio books or other things of that nature.
684
But if it comes from a YouTube video, then I just add that YouTube video to the canvas.
685
And if there's a specific idea that I wanted, I connect that to an AI chat.
686
And I'm like, what was the idea about this or explain this concept to me in the way the video does?
687
Right.
688
Boom.
689
That's my research for the newsletter.
690
Right.
691
Right.
692
I'm not asking the AI to write it all for me.
693
I'm just like, I have this rough idea of what I want.
694
I have these sources all in my workspace.
695
How do I get the information out of those sources in like a synthesized way
696
because that's a different use case from like finding the exact part of it.
697
And then drag that over right next to where I'm writing the newsletter.
698
And it's like, I have my outline.
699
I have my research.
700
I have an idea I threw over here.
701
I have an image.
702
Yeah.
703
Yeah.
704
I think like a drive for media, all sorts of media.
705
Yeah.
706
All transcribe is a really good way of putting it.
707
The change from Cortex to Eden, it's like the scope of we're building is like 10x bigger than what we've done before.
708
It's like we went from a note -taking app to now building Google Drive,
709
Miro, Poppy, Frame .io, all downloaders from different websites,
710
like sketchy websites that let you download Instagram Reels or YouTube videos.
711
All of that is now eaten.
712
And we're able to do that because of all the mistakes that we made and what we've learned from them.
713
Like the way that we structure our team now is that every single person has to be laser focused on a project
714
And and has to be full stack rather than like
715
Focusing on one compartmentalized part of the app and the way
716
that the tech is structured to begin with Allows for us to actually build these things really really really quickly
717
and move really quickly and so I think like like
718
Definitely yes, Cortex was a mistake, but it was a necessarily learning process for us to be able to get here.
719
Yeah.
720
All right.
721
Let's wrap up with how we came about Eden as a name and the branding.
722
Yes.
723
Branding behind it, but the brand messaging.
724
Yeah.
725
So what we first did when we decided, okay, we're actually doing Eden, we're doing something new, is like we had to rethink
726
and clarify exactly who we were for um what what how
727
are we going to like what do we want to be
728
known as yeah is the main thing is like you think
729
of the company 10 years from now who do you want to serve who's attracted to it
730
so on and so forth and we were
731
initially we started with like who are we for initially with cortex were for creators
732
which is still kind of who we're for but what kind of creators
733
and then we think deeper and it's like people who still deeply care about their craft.
734
Yes.
735
Two is like, okay, well, what's the opposite of AI slop and it's craft or like artisan work.
736
And then we started to draw that distinction of like, okay, we're more for artisans or people who want to be artisans because in the future,
737
when AI slop become so noisy, like the artisans are going to be the one that stands out.
738
So we're taking a bet on the future of the artisan, so to say.
739
All of that started to come together
740
and we started to get this really cohesive brand vision where it's like everything
741
we put into this app every minor detail we add has to be this like focused around craft
742
and artisan level work because the people that we become
743
and build for have to be attracted to this thing yeah right they have a very high expectation of quality
744
and polish we went through a bunch we're like okay
745
we're for craftsmanship what about like da vinci there's da vinci resolve what about this
746
or this or this and we just went through Greek names, Renaissance names, artistic names, etc,
747
etc. And I think I threw out just like Eden.
748
Yeah, you randomly said Eden.
749
Yeah.
750
And we thought about it.
751
Yeah, we were kind of, we always hit this point.
752
There's a cycle in the ideas that we have when we're trying to refine a feature, we're trying to refine the name or whatever part.
753
And it's like we run through so many ideas to the point of nearly giving up and just like forgetting about it.
754
And then we throw one out and it's like, Oh, okay.
755
Yeah, that one's good.
756
Yeah, yeah.
757
And we thought about Eden for a while.
758
There's a number of reasons why it's good.
759
Oh my god, the logo was a pain to get to.
760
So for those of you who follow me but don't know that Matt and Ari have their own channel,
761
go watch it because it's a very different vibe from mine.
762
It's like I watch it.
763
It's fun.
764
Thank you.
765
Yeah, the thing there with the logo props to Jason.
766
Oh, yeah, Jason videographer.
767
He's not in frame, but Maybe he'll face has he face revealed yet?
768
He has he has okay
769
We got Jason
770
The thing with the logo is like we had this really good logo
771
that we really liked and Wanted to keep
772
and it looked good in the mobile like the app icon and everything it was just perfect and and we posted it,
773
or they included it in one of their first video on their YouTube channel at the end.
774
And then someone commented like, isn't this the same as like Flora?
775
Yeah, isn't this the same logo as Flora, which is another canvas based or node based app.
776
And then we looked at it exact same.
777
And it's like, how did we even come to that logo?
778
And it's kind of simple.
779
It's like four pedals.
780
Yeah.
781
And it fit our name perfectly.
782
So we're like, do we have to change it?
783
So if anyone from floor is watching this we changed it.
784
Yeah, we did change it
785
Now we have something that I think it's grown on me a lot
786
and on the note of like the name Eden the reason why we thought
787
that the name was good is because Eden was the garden of knowledge, right?
788
It's like Yeah, it's it's the place where knowledge began for humanity
789
and We want our app to be the place for that is like your home as a creative and the old logo
790
It was duplicated across so many startups
791
Yeah, every single day there was another company that had the same logo.
792
Yeah, I think we have something more unique now.
793
Yeah, we have something extremely unique now.
794
Yeah.
795
All right, let's end strong.
796
Biggest either lesson or failure?
797
I think the biggest thing is a lot of times people will, at least for me, like a lot of times people will say,
798
oh, this is too hard.
799
You shouldn't do it because it's too hard
800
and until you actually try giving up at
801
that point is like it it's meaningless like we wouldn't be here
802
if we just listen to people saying oh it's too hard
803
you should just not do it like even eden wouldn't exist
804
if we if we kept to
805
that advice yeah there there is it's actually a common reaction
806
that we get like when we when we meet like vcs
807
or random founders or investors and we explain what we're working on
808
and the fact that we're trying to build something that's better than google drive
809
the initial reaction that a lot of people give us is like how are you going to do
810
that like yeah it's too hard why would you do that yeah
811
and several months later we're at a point now where i actually think we have a better product yeah
812
so it's possible just have to try yeah you just have to try
813
if i were to like zoom out and
814
and see what i've learned big picture it would just be
815
that like you there's no point in not taking risks that's a poor way to frame it
816
but everything that i i've done is and everything successful that
817
that came in my life came as a result of taking
818
like a big risk for example going part -time in university
819
contrary to what my parents suggested in order to pursue shitty random jobs outside of school
820
that were content -based and paid like pennies.
821
But if I didn't do all that, it wouldn't have led me to meeting you.
822
And being on that call, taking the risk of just public humiliation by trying to pitch you in front of 50 strangers,
823
if I hadn't done that, we wouldn't be here.
824
And then taking the risk of flying to Japan
825
and rebuilding the thing when we had the existing app to worry about and when everybody on the team told us,
826
you know, rebuilding is probably not a very good idea right now.
827
If we didn't take that risk, we also wouldn't be here.
828
So I think like success is just like a series of perhaps well calculated risks, but like a series of big risks.
829
And I think anybody who makes it big does things that seem conventionally like a bad idea.
830
Yeah.
831
But you know that it's a good idea and can lead to potentially something great.
832
Yeah.
833
Mine is the second that you think you know what you're doing,
834
you're kind of fucked where like I thought that a lot of the skills and things that I had learned
835
from my whole content creator journey and freelancing
836
and all these different types of products would transfer over like one -to -one to a startup
837
it's like I'm having to relearn not relearn
838
but refine a lot of those things because I have to refine them to the point of like
839
revealing what the principle actually was.
840
I thought I knew what the principle was, but now it's like.. things are thrown on top of their head
841
because it's like okay set a deadline pressure that kicks people into action
842
and when I'm applying it to myself it's like I can I know what I'm trying to do
843
so I have all of the the different variables accounted for in
844
that situation but when trying to apply
845
that to a team it's like you don't really know how that's going to work
846
and when it doesn't work you're like is like this fundamental framework principle yeah is this framework
847
of how I work wrong as a whole.
848
And then it's like, okay, well, how...
849
Then what's the actual deeper underlying truth there?
850
Yeah, and that's the thing is like, how do I apply my worldview to a team?
851
Like, not that I'm trying to impose my worldview,
852
but how do I make sense of this team in a way that I can best like guide or lead?
853
You know what I mean?
854
Because I can lead myself just fine, I think.
855
Sure, I'm an idiot sometimes, but like for a team, it like I think about that a lot is
856
and it kind of frustrates me is like I have like these people
857
that I feel like I need to guide
858
but it's also a value of mine to let people do their own thing yeah
859
and so then it's like where do I draw the boundary between
860
that right it's like I want everyone on our team whether they want
861
or not is another problem to be able to take feel as if they
862
are like partly owning this thing
863
they have the the ownership mindset to the point where they can make decisions solve problems on their own
864
so it's just a challenge it's a very like interesting
865
and rewarding challenge
866
that I am trying to new sets of problems yeah yeah better sets of problems yeah
867
and I think one thing
868
that we need to look out for in the future is we we've made mistakes in the past
869
that's for sure that's this video a big million dollars in mistakes yeah
870
we will continue to we will continue to
871
but i think what sets people apart is whether you can take your mistake
872
and not repeat it because as humans we're very prone to remaking the same mistakes over
873
and over again and keep in mind
874
that we will continue to make new mistakes
875
and we will have to watch out for them
876
and learn from them the same way that we made all the mistakes that led to cortex yeah
877
And you guys will see it in real time.
878
And you will be the ones to inform us of these mistakes.
879
So with that said, again, rolling out to Cortex users from highest payment tier, just because there's less people,
880
to the free tier, that's going to happen the Monday before
881
Black Friday through Thursday.
882
This video will be out on Thursday.
883
Friday through Monday is the only time the early access will be open to the public.
884
So if you're watching this within four days of it going out, go sign up and try it.
885
And after that, we will do a full public launch at some point in 2026.
886
That will be with desktop, mobile, etc. And then in between that time, we may try something.
887
So if you're watching this in between that like
888
Dead Zone, you may be able to reach out to an Eden user and get them to invite you to the platform.
889
If that's a thing, leave a comment, and maybe someone can help you.
890
Comment on someone who actually got in.
891
Go on Twitter, go on Instagram, find people that have gotten into Eden, and they should be able to send you an invite link,
892
and they'll only have a limited amount, like three to five.
893
So it'll be a fun way to see how quickly Eden grows and how much people actually want to use it.
894
So with that, thanks for coming on, I guess.
895
We're a safe channel.
896
Yeah, this is the Eden co -founders.
897
Enjoy, Eden.
898
Thank you for your time.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Kortex: The $3 Million Dollar Mistake”. This video has 898 sentences and 10307 words to shadow. The speech runs for 54:00. The speaker talks fast, about 191 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cortex noun | /ˈkɔɹtɛks/ | The outer layer of an internal organ or body structure, such as the kidney or the brain. |
| startup noun | /ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/ | The act or process of starting a process or machine. |
| reel verb | /ˈɹiːl/ | To wind on a reel. |
| canvas noun | /ˈkæn.vəs/ | A type of coarse cloth, woven from hemp (traditionally) or from cotton and polyesters, useful for making sails, tents, and overcoats or as a surface for… |
| rebuild verb | /ɹiːˈbɪld/ | To build again or anew. |
| logo noun | /ˈloʊ.ɡoʊ/ | A visual symbol or emblem that acts as a trademark or a means of identification of a company or organization. |
| desktop noun | /ˈdɛsktɒp/ | The top surface of a desk. |
| stack noun | /stæk/ | A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch. |
| founder noun | /ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/ | One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.). |
| capture verb | /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/ | To take control of; to seize by force or stratagem. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| boom verb | /bum/ | To make a loud, hollow, resonant sound. |
| keyboard noun | /ˈki.bɔɹd/ | A set of keys laid out in a gridlike pattern, used for typing on a typewriter, computer, etc. |
| creator noun | /kɹiːˈeɪ̯təː/ | Something or someone which creates or makes something. |
| tier noun | /ˈtɪɚ/ | A row or range, especially one at a higher or lower level than another. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| sign up verb | To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something. | |
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Why don't we just try?
- It's like, what do you mean I'm too young?
- You want me to be a fourth year student?
- Does our time reflect that?
- It's like, okay, well, would I use this?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been hearing · we've been doing · they've been looking |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if I hadn't done that, we wouldn't be |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't tried · haven't seen · You've gotten |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | can be categorized · were forced · wasn't really fleshed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 271 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, breathe /bɹiːð/, authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, ownership /ˈoʊnɚʃɪp/, vacation /veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cortex, startup, reel.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.