00:00 – 05:09 | Seeing the AI Wave and Choosing a Role
[00:00] Patrick Francey
Alex, one of the things you said earlier was that about three years ago you really tapped into AI. You saw an opportunity in it.
For me, I started using AI pretty extensively a couple of years ago, and I have leaned into it as a user. You leaned into it in a very different way three years ago.
There are still people who use it like Google, and others who are still trying to figure out how to spell “AI.”
When you look at that diversity of adoption and how powerful AI is becoming, why did you embrace it three years ago? What did you see? Was it the scientist in you, or did you have some kind of inside scoop?
[00:53] Alex Mehr
It was a little bit of both.
I played with AI products early on. Many years ago, I actually tried to build an AI related product using the previous generation of the technology, and it just was not ready. That was around 2016. Neural nets and AI existed, but they were nowhere near where they are today, so I gave up on that project.
I had also played with artificial intelligence in grad school. I dabbled in neural nets there.
But when I saw this new generation of AI that arrived in the form of transformer models and then ChatGPT, I thought, okay, this is it, it is really going to happen. The moment I saw it, I knew.
At that point, you basically put yourself in one of three buckets, and this is important. I noticed the same kind of choice when I became an entrepreneur.
Back then, I started with an app studio building mobile apps before the iPhone even had an App Store. The iPhone App Store launched in 2008, and I had already started in 2007 building what were called Myspace widgets at the time.
I saw that as an “amplification” movement. I realized I had a choice. I could be at the forefront of it. I could be a user who goes along for the ride. Or I could completely ignore it.
I chose to be at the forefront, and that decision paid off. So when I saw this new AI wave, I recognized the same pattern repeating.
I told myself: I can be a pioneer and builder, I can be a participant and user, or I can ignore it. Sometimes it is fine to ignore a trend if it is a fad. But with AI, I looked at it and thought, this is going to touch every aspect of our lives. Every single one.
Once that clicked, the answer was obvious. I jumped in.
05:09 – 10:03 | Boats, Waves, and the Conviction plus Flexibility Combo
[05:09] Patrick
What I hear in that is a different lens than just “be an early adopter.” I have always been fairly early with technology, but mostly as a user.
With the internet, for example, I remember when people were still asking, “What is email?” I am old enough to remember dial up and a world without the internet.
I adopted technology early, but I did not always see it as a business model. The people who truly saw the potential of the internet built very different businesses than those who just used email.
So there is a caution there. It is not enough to just become a good user. Where are the business model opportunities inside AI, right? That is what you saw immediately.
You saw it not just as a powerful tool to use, but as a platform to build on and create businesses around. That feels like a fundamentally different mindset than simply being an early adopter as a user. Is that how you see it?
[05:09] Alex
Yes, and here is what I tell people when they see a trend they know will be big and they want to be a pioneer, but they do not know exactly where to dig.
That was me when I first became an entrepreneur. I did not know exactly where the “amplification” trend would go. I could not predict the App Store. But I knew websites and dot coms were going to be amplified.
So my thought was, I do not know exactly what app I am going to build, but I am going to create a sort of mad scientist lab and just build the first app.
Our first company did not even start as online dating. We eventually became an online dating app company. The very first app was actually a polling product. The company was called “Polection,” short for polling plus election. Horrible name in hindsight, but that is where we started.
The point was not perfection. It was action. You identify the wave, the tsunami that is forming, hopefully in a positive way, and you put your little dinghy, your little boat, in that part of the ocean.
It might not be the right boat. But once you are in the right place, you can pivot the boat, rebuild it, layer on new things, and wait for the wave to start pushing you forward.
From that action comes information. You learn what works, what does not. You can say, “Okay, I built the first boat wrong, I need to change these things.” Maybe you try a completely new idea, but you are still in the same industry, and now you have knowledge to bring to it.
That is literally what I did. The first AI company we started, the first AI app we built, does not exist anymore. Most people do not even know it ever existed, and that is fine. I pivoted about six times before finding product market fit.
Every turn of that wheel taught me something about building AI apps, about new capabilities that had just come out, about what users actually wanted. And that feedback loop between action and information is critical.
Even once you have product market fit, you do not stop experimenting. You keep launching new products. You build the next thing differently because of what you have learned.
This approach suits people in different personality camps. Some people have a lot of conviction. Some people are very flexible.
I think the best entrepreneurs in history somehow have both. They have conviction, but they are also willing to be flexible, then they lock into conviction again, then they flex again.
It is a strange dichotomy, but both traits have to coexist. People who only have conviction never move because they never know what to form conviction around. People who are only flexible jump around constantly and never push an idea far enough to actually learn from it.
You need both.
10:03 – 12:21 | Failing Forward and Being Flexible on Product
[10:03] Patrick
It sounds like there is a philosophy underneath that, which is failing forward. You take action, you figure things out, you stay willing to pivot. That is just part of the learning curve.
When I am coaching small business owners, I often see (and I have done this myself) that they have a plan and try to build the whole thing end to end before they ever actually start.
I adopted technology early, but I did not always see it as a business model. The people who truly saw the potential of the internet built very different businesses than those who just used email.
But the better strategy is to start, move forward with the information you have, and accept that you do not know what you do not know until you are in motion.
I have put time, energy, and money into projects that fell flat. In hindsight it is obvious why they were never going to work, but we only learned that after launch.
So what I am hearing from you is, just start moving, then correct and learn as you go. That does not mean you do not have a plan, but you cannot wait for a perfect plan. Is that a fair way of putting it?
[11:46] Alex
That is exactly right, as long as you put yourself in the right industry, around the right trend, and with the right people.
My framework is people, company, products. Be flexible on the product. People and company can be more fixed. Those are more important.
The product is the variable, so you can flip and flip and flip until you hit product market fit. That is the gist of it.
12:21 – 17:49 | Adoption, Opportunity, and Energy Costs of AI
[12:21] Patrick
When you think about what is going on in the AI world, you embraced it about three years ago and you caught it right as it came into the public sphere. Developers and insiders saw it coming before that, but for the average person it was new.
As I have traveled and spoken, I often ask audiences how many people would say they have truly embraced AI. I have been surprised at how few hands go up.
Some people use it like Google. Some have barely tried it. My guess is maybe twenty percent of the room raise their hands and say, “Yes, I have really integrated this into my life and work.”
What are you seeing? And the reason I share that anecdote is because I feel like there is still a huge amount of opportunity. How do you view that?
[13:32] Alex
There is absolutely a lot of opportunity left.
The way I think about these macro shifts is that they last decades. Think industrial revolution, computer revolution, internet revolution.
Look at how long it took before some of the big companies that we now think of as obvious showed up. Meta and TikTok came years after the internet was already mainstream. The same is true of many smartphone apps that arrived well after the iPhone launched.
The same will be true for AI. It is definitely not “too late.” We can rule that out.
As for the percentage of people participating, my user base is biased, because people who come to something like Famous with AI are already motivated to build products. They have basically bought in.
But if we are talking about the general public, my estimate is similar to yours: maybe twenty percent have implemented AI in some meaningful way in their lives or businesses.
That means eighty percent have not. I see that not as a hindrance but as a massive opportunity. If you build AI products, you are riding a wave where the active user base can grow from twenty percent to something close to one hundred percent over time.
You can also build entire businesses just around onboarding non users and putting AI systems into existing companies.
So the fact that most people are still not using AI deeply is, to me, a reason to get involved now, not an argument against it.
[15:42] Patrick
Earlier I mentioned a conversation with a guest who is very environmentally conscious. He is pro technology and pro AI, but he raised an angle I had not thought much about, which is the amount of energy needed to power AI.
Data centers, local and national infrastructure, power use, water use just to cool everything. He quoted a stat, something like one question to AI requiring an enormous amount of water. It was a mind blowing number.
It really got me thinking about the scale of energy consumption required to keep expanding AI, especially as it gets smarter and more integrated.
Do you have a perspective on that?
[17:49] Alex
The concern is not misplaced. We should be conscious of the environmental impact of AI use.
At the same time, AI unlocks a lot of productivity and other benefits.
And, as with most technologies, the first versions are clunky and inefficient. Over time they get better. A lot of new AI data centers are far more energy efficient. Many now use closed loop water cooling systems where the water is recycled.
I am not defending everything the industry does, but I am saying that, as usual, economic and regulatory forces push things in the right direction over time. The technology keeps improving.
So yes, it is a valid concern. And we also need to zoom out and remember that this is an evolving system.
17:49 – 23:07 | Jobs, Disruption, and Positioning Your “Tribe”
[18:56] Patrick
Let me stay on AI for a moment because there are so many different narratives.
One of the first things people say is, “AI is going to take all the jobs.” I have my own view, but when you hear that fear, that we are going to have mass unemployment and soup lines, what is your response?
[19:39] Alex
There are a lot of AI optimists who say, “This is just like the industrial revolution. Some categories of jobs disappear, others appear, and overall standard of living goes up and unemployment stays low.”
That is the classic optimistic view.
I actually do not fully subscribe to it. I think AI is truly going to replace a lot of jobs, and I think it will have negative societal impacts. That is my personal opinion. I am not an AI Kool Aid drinker.
Having said that, for an individual person the key is to think of this as a seasonal change that will happen regardless of what you do.
If you want to be an activist and work on better societal outcomes, great. I am in favor of anyone trying to improve the societal impact of AI.
But as a person, you still have to choose which side you want to be on. Do you want to be in a category whose jobs are likely to be eliminated, or do you want to be on the side that benefits from the trend?
A lot of people will benefit from AI. The question is, will you and your family be positioned on that side?
At the macro level, I am not very optimistic. I think our systems will need big changes. But at the micro level, I treat that as a dinner conversation.
When I talk to my users, my friends, my family, my kids, the question is, how do we position our tribe to take advantage of this? That is where the concrete action set becomes much clearer.
[23:07] Patrick
I agree with that. There are people who spend all their time worrying about the macro and never actually move.
It comes back to critical thinking. Are they really looking at what is happening, or just complaining about what might happen and waiting to get hit by the wave?
[23:46] Alex
The truth is, neither you nor I know exactly how it will play out, and neither do the so called experts.
If you look at the trend of humanity, there are ups and downs and good and bad, and yet humanity finds ways to adapt.
So my big picture view is a bit like the Rumi line, “This too shall pass.” In the meantime, focus on where you and your tribe want to stand.
24:16 – 32:59 | Efficiency, CEOs, and the Science of Prompts and A/B Testing
[24:16] Patrick
Back in the seventies, when computers were being implemented, the story was that computers would take everyone’s job. I worked in the oil industry, and there was a lot of resistance when computers came in for inventory management and manufacturing.
In the end, it became a whole new industry and new jobs emerged. People pivoted.
I think that is our challenge with AI. We need some confidence that new roles will emerge out of this. Robotics alone is a whole new manufacturing and brain power ecosystem.
I recently watched a panel of CEOs, some from tech and some from other industries, who are very progressive. They said they are insisting their teams embrace AI, not to replace them, but to increase productivity, efficiency and creativity.
They were clear that certain roles, like writing code, will change dramatically, but they were not talking about eliminating all staff.
It reminded me of us telling our kids, “You need to learn to code.” Now AI is writing code.
For me personally, the way I use AI for efficiency, research, project work and idea generation has been incredible. I am leaning into it and often blown away by what it can do.
You mentioned your science brain and your NASA background. I imagine AI is top of mind at NASA as well.
[27:25] Alex
It probably should be top of mind, though from what I can see, big institutions are not always on the bleeding edge the way you might expect.
[27:36] Patrick
In your own business, when you think about app design and AI, do you actually sit in creative meetings brainstorming new AI apps? How do you think about your model around app development?
[28:00] Alex
Whatever you do repeatedly, you become good at.
So, if you set your mission to “build new AI ideas,” after you come up with the first few, new ideas appear almost out of thin air.
At this point, I have more ideas than I can implement. Anything I look at, in my day, in my business, in my life, I ask, “How would AI change this?”
Sometimes the answer is fuzzy and nothing useful comes out. Other times, the answer is crisp and that is a product idea.
That is my current method. It is an idea machine: look at everyday situations through the lens of “How would AI change this?” When a really good answer appears, you have the seed of a product.
[29:21] Patrick
Prompts are the key to unlocking AI’s magic. Understanding how to communicate with it really matters.
Do you have a list of prompts you publish, or a methodology you teach?
I look at my last two years with ChatGPT and I can see how important it is to give it a role. For example, when I write, I will ask it to review my writing as if it were a world class publisher or editor, and that totally changes the feedback.
I also tell it how I want it to respond: “Do not placate me, do not patronize me, do not pump my tires. Be direct. Give me the hard truth about the writing.”
That changed everything. It became a very supportive and dependable tool and sped up my writing enormously.
What is your take on prompts and on back testing the answers that come from AI?
[30:07] Alex
Back testing and A/B testing are actually the key to building AI apps.
Most people do not realize how sensitive AI products are to how they are programmed at the system level with system prompts.
Even the people who build the models, at Anthropic or OpenAI, do not know the ideal system prompt in advance. It is not a knowable thing. It is a discovery process.
When you are in a discovery process, your best friend is A/B testing.
So my advice to anyone building AI apps is to create an A/B testing harness from day one. For example, roll your product with two different system prompts and see which one performs better in practice.
If you have users, you can show different versions to different users and compare performance.
ChatGPT itself does this. You sometimes see it run two answers in parallel and then ask which you prefer. That is exactly A/B testing, likely for a system prompt or some other configuration.
If you are just a user, not a builder, there are a lot of prompt engineering courses and many great YouTube videos.
At this point, I think basic prompt engineering is a must if you are serious about using AI well.
A simple habit like telling the AI what role to assume before giving instructions can automatically improve performance. For example, “You are a world class X” before you ask it to do Y.
Over time, as the models get better, the need for precision in prompts may go down for average users. There is an industry debate about whether prompt engineering will be more or less important in the future.
But if you want that last bit of performance, it is still worth spending some time to learn how to use AI properly.
[32:59] Patrick
There are a lot of people selling prompts and subscription libraries. I have not gone that route. I have mostly been figuring out my own prompts.
To your point, defining the persona and the way you want the AI to behave is huge. That alone has been a game changer for me.
32:59 – 36:22 | Does AI Make Us Dumber?
[34:20] Patrick
There is an argument I have heard, including on a Joe Rogan podcast, that AI is making us dumber because we no longer have to think as deeply or use critical thinking and first principles.
What is your response to that?
[35:01] Alex
It is like saying that cars make us physically less fit.
There is some truth there. We are less fit if we use cars for everything and never walk.
But responsible people take ownership of their fitness. If they do not need to walk to get from point A to point B because there is a car, they choose to go to the gym and exercise anyway.
It is the same with AI. It saves you time. Use that time to exercise your brain in other ways.
Listen to audio books. Play chess. Work on hard business problems.
If you just stop using your brain because AI exists, yes, you will get mentally lazy. But that is a personal responsibility issue.
Your brain is your most important asset. It should be your job to keep it sharp. And it is not that hard if you are intentional about it.
36:22 – 43:26 | Fears, Weird Behaviors, and AI Policing AI
[36:22] Patrick
If you look into the future and think about your fears around AI, what are the concerns that really make you wonder where this is going?
You have already said there are reasons not to be overly optimistic about mankind’s future. What specifically makes you a little sleepless at night?
[36:58] Alex
One thing is that AI already does unpredictable things.
We are building a product that is not launched yet. I gave it a prompt to go research a website and generate a video for me.
It tried Googling it and could not reach it because Google blocked it. Then it opened DuckDuckGo, searched there, and got to the website anyway.
No one told it to do that.
When I saw that, I thought, okay, that is a little unsettling.
Foundation model companies will tell you they have red teams that try to get AI to do terrible things, then they learn from that and limit the behavior.
That might work now. But will it still work one year from now, or two years from now, when the models are much more capable?
I think in a couple of years we will have to have “police AI” systems that police other AI, because they will outsmart humans.
That is a macro concern.
But as always, I bring it down to the micro level. What does that mean for me and my work? What levers do I actually control?
I can acknowledge the big concern and still focus on what specific actions I can take in my domain.
[39:28] Patrick
I am struggling a bit with the platform landscape. I use ChatGPT, I pay for it, and I am always on whatever the latest version is. I also test with Grok and have tried a few others.
My resistance to changing platforms is that ChatGPT knows me. It knows my work, it recalls things, and I can count on it to behave in a certain way.
When you look at all the different platforms out there, are you a ChatGPT person, a Grok person? How do you think about the different models?
[40:34] Alex
I play with all of them, because I am developing in this space. I am not a normal user.
Honestly, I do not even like ChatGPT that much.
A lot of people around me use it as their default. I am kind of ambivalent.
[40:59] Patrick
Let me dig into that. As a sophisticated user, what do you not like about ChatGPT compared to the others?
[41:12] Alex
Two things. It is not always the smartest, and it is too verbose.
You can tell it to be less verbose, but even then, I often feel the quality is not the best.
That said, these products are starting to feel more similar over time.
The reason is that their effective IQ is approaching ours.
If you compare a dog, a bird and a turtle, we easily see differences in their intelligence because they are far below human level.
But as you get closer to human IQ, it becomes harder for us to tell the differences.
We are now in that range where the models are roughly in our band. At some point they will be smarter than us, and we will not be able to tell which one is smarter, because we are all below them.
A dog cannot tell the difference between me and Einstein. To the dog, we are just two weird superior animals.
I think eventually we will need AI to evaluate which AI is better, because humans will no longer be able to judge that reliably.
43:26 – 51:18 | A Billion People and Measuring Value
[43:26] Patrick
Let me shift gears toward business and your own companies.
When you look at your businesses and AI and how you operate, you have been very successful with the projects you have taken on and what you have grown through.
Do you have a particular vision for your current business? Do you say, “This is where I am going, this is the outcome I want,” then work backwards with your team from that vision? Is that how you operate as a founder and CEO?
[44:06] Alex
Yes.
My goal is to build a product, or a portfolio of products, that touches a billion lives. I want a billion people using something we built.
I have never done that before. It is a purely personal goal.
It is very difficult. People hear “a billion” and think it sounds simple, but it is not. Even getting to a million users is very hard. Ten million is very hard.
I have been fortunate enough to reach tens of millions in the past. Now I want to go to a billion.
I want to improve the lives or businesses of a billion people, even if only a little bit.
It is an arbitrary choice. I could just as well choose to deeply help ten people survive cancer, for example. That would be equally meaningful.
But I personally choose the path of trying to help a large number of people a little bit, rather than a few people a lot. That is just my personal preference.
[45:26] Patrick
I was listening to an interview with Seth Godin. He talked about his book Tribes, which I have read a couple of times.
He said he would rather have one thousand engaged followers than one hundred thousand disengaged followers.
What you are talking about is affecting a billion people with an app, which assumes they are engaged and finding value.
That is different from vanity metrics like likes and clicks. You are talking about actual value creation for a huge number of people.
[47:00] Alex
Exactly. What matters is aggregate value delivered.
You can deliver a lot of value to very few people, like a surgeon or a specialist physician does. They may save lives, but the number of people they touch is limited.
Or you can deliver a smaller amount of value to a huge number of people.
Both are valid.
For me, it is about real value, not follower counts.
Here is a litmus test I like.
Ask yourself, if your product ceased to exist tomorrow, how much pain and vacuum would that create in the world?
Take Gmail as an example. If it went down globally for a day, Twitter and every other platform would explode with complaints. Society relies on it.
That shows you how much silent value it adds.
Use that same test on your own products. If they disappeared, would there be a real gap? If yes, you are doing something meaningful.
51:18 – 56:46 | From Scientist to Entrepreneur and the Big Jump
[51:18] Patrick
Let’s talk about your journey to this point. You are a scientist by training.
Did you have entrepreneurial spirit when you were younger, or did that come later?
[51:18] Alex
Interesting question.
If you had met me as a teenager, you would not have pegged me as an entrepreneur. I was a math and physics competition kid.
I was all about science and math. Since I was about five, I wanted to be a physicist.
My role models were people like Einstein. I grew up in a completely different mental world.
Looking back, I am glad I had that phase, because it gave me a certain temperament and way of thinking that helps as an entrepreneur.
One reason many entrepreneurs fail is that they are too money driven. I am not saying you should not care about money, but if it is the main focus, it can blind you.
I grew up focused on doing good science. I did not care much about being the richest person.
Even now, I do not necessarily put business people on a pedestal above scientists. I still love watching science talks. I often think scientists are smarter.
So in that sense I am a bit different.
I know many people grow up wanting to be entrepreneurs, and I respect that. I might even prefer my kids to have that instinct earlier.
I did not. I came to entrepreneurship later.
[54:05] Patrick
You worked at NASA, which is a big job.
Was there a fork in the road moment where you had to choose between staying in that world and going the entrepreneurial path?
[54:51] Alex
Yes.
I had been thinking about it for a while. During that time I was also getting my MBA at Berkeley.
When you are in business school, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, so that environment probably had an impact.
At some point I realized I had too many “what ifs” in my head. I decided to just jump.
I quit everything. I had a small 401(k). I cashed it out, paid the penalties and taxes, and put the money into my first company.
I was younger, I did not have a family yet, so I had less to lose.
I have always believed in minimizing regret. I could not live with the regret of not having tried.
I did not even know exactly what I was going to do. I just knew I had to try.
I incorporated the company out of my bedroom in Berkeley. I had no idea how to get an EIN number, so I just called the IRS and figured it out, opened a business bank account, closed out my 401(k), and went for it.
The company was an app studio building widgets. It was not very specific. But that was the point. I needed to get started and commit.
56:46 – 1:05:07 | Macro Chaos, Micro Agency, and What You Do With the Data
[56:46] Patrick
When you look at the world today, we have technology, AI, wars, geopolitical tension.
As we sit here, we do not know what will happen between Russia, Ukraine, NATO, China. It is messy and uncertain.
Since 2020, the speed of change has been insane. Middle of March 2020, the world basically changed.
There is so much fear and polarization.
Do you see that in your world, or do you stay mostly focused on your lane and your work?
[58:01] Alex
I am closer to the latter, but not because I think it will not affect me.
I do think we are going to see new forms of warfare that we have never seen before, driven by AI and robotics. There may be some very dark days.
So I am not under any illusion that it is all fine.
But again, I bring it to the micro level. What can I do about it?
I like macro questions and I can talk about them for a long time, but what matters in practice is what I do at my level.
If you want a better world, ask people to focus on what they can do individually and get better there.
The problem is that news media and social media constantly pull people into macro thinking.
People pick sides. They think about global issues all day and forget that society is actually shaped by billions of micro actions.
I think that has corrupted a whole generation of brains.
I would rather see us dial down the macro obsession and dial up the micro focus.
Ask: what can I do that either mitigates a problem or contributes in a positive way? If I cannot affect a given macro issue, maybe I should focus elsewhere where my actions matter.
[1:00:55] Patrick
I am totally aligned with that. It is very much in line with Marcus Aurelius and stoic philosophy: what can you control?
The world is full of information about problems, whether it is the housing crisis, climate, or anything else.
At some point, more information is just more noise. I often say, if more information were the answer, we would all be billionaires with six pack abs.
My approach is to gather information, look at possibilities and probabilities, then build a thesis.
From there, I put a plan together to mitigate risk or move forward more aggressively. I act on that thesis, but I stay open to changing it as new information comes in.
What are your thoughts on that?
[1:02:36] Alex
I totally agree.
Think about your options at the micro level. What can you do? Can you actually do something about this problem? If not, maybe it does not deserve that much of your mental bandwidth.
If you can do something, then do it.
That is more productive than being emotionally pulled around by every macro argument you see online.
[1:03:47] Patrick
I totally agree.
The frustrating part of legacy media, social media, even some of the talking heads (and I include myself in that group sometimes) is that there is so much focus on the negative and not enough on solutions.
People keep waiting for the government to fix things, which is its own problem.
We really do need to buckle down and use the information to make decisions and move.
In the world of technology, especially, we have no excuse not to access information and tools.
[1:04:27] Alex
Yes.
We have more access than ever, and with AI there are essentially no unsolved information questions. You can get every how to guide you need.
So it comes down to decision making and ownership at the individual level, and not letting yourself be emotionally captured by macro narratives.
1:05:07 – 1:08:31 | Rapid Fire and Wrap Up
[1:05:07] Patrick
Alex, you have been very generous with your time. I want to start winding down with a few rapid fire questions that are never actually rapid. Ready?
[1:05:31] Alex
Yes.
[1:05:31] Patrick
Do you have a favorite quote?
[1:05:40] Alex
“If you are not embarrassed by the first product you launched, you launched too late.”
[1:05:55] Patrick
I love that. Was there a book on your journey that had a huge impact and that you think everyone should read?
[1:06:09] Alex
The Art of War. And an Elon Musk biography. You may hate him or like him. I happen to like him a lot. Read his biography. The man is efficient. You want to study him.
[1:06:43] Patrick
I am an Elon fan as well. I do not agree with everything he does, but I respect the impact he has had.
Apple or Android?
[1:06:48] Alex
Apple.
[1:06:48] Patrick
Favorite movie?
[1:06:48] Alex
The Godfather.
[1:06:48] Patrick
Favorite song or genre? Are you a music guy?
[1:06:48] Alex
I am not really a music guy. When I listen, it is usually classical, especially Beethoven.
[1:07:19] Patrick
Same, I love writing to classical music.
Favorite swear word?
[1:07:30] Alex
The F word. “Fuck it, fuck this.” That is my go to.
[1:07:36] Patrick
If there is a God, what do you want God to say when you get to the gates?
[1:07:42] Alex/b>
“You get to meet your dad now.”
That is all I want.
[1:07:46] Patrick
You did not have that opportunity growing up?
[1:07:46] Alex
I lost him last year. So I would like to meet him again.
[1:07:57] Patrick
I love that.
Final question, what are you grateful for today?
[1:08:00] Alex
My kids. My two kids.
[1:08:00] Patrick
How old are they?
[1:08:00] Alex
Four and one.
[1:08:00] Patrick
Fantastic ages. I have grandkids who are eight and nine.
Alex, I am always grateful for the opportunity on this show to meet really cool people, and you definitely qualify. I am grateful for family, and I am grateful for the time you gave us today. Thank you very much.
[1:08:31] Alex
Thank you for having me.
