Jeff, thanks for joining us today. It’s really honored to have you here. Pleasure. As, uh, as we’ve had with many of our guests. But, um, what you’ve been doing in your career is like with your business with the indie app is hold something really close to me. But before we jump into to that side of the story, tell me a bit about yourself. And I guess the journey you’ve been on over the last years of your career. Yeah. Uh, big question. I know a massive question. Where do you start? Uh, yeah. So I’m Jeff. Um, I think I was probably I have these memories of of myself as a kid when my uncle was rebuilding computers to sell them. Um, and when he wasn’t around, I was putting them back together so I could play Commander Keen. And then when he came back, I would take it apart. Right. I didn’t touch it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. So I wouldn’t get in trouble. Um, but that was where I first fell in love with the idea of, like, hey, I can put things together and build something interesting and and give an experience. Really? Um, and I guess later on in life, when I started working, uh, it quickly moved into, like, I was actually working with a bunch of mainframe systems for a financial services company. Super boring, but turns out, like back when we used to use and we still kind of do mainframe systems, we solve the problem of process with humans, right? And so I ended up building a bunch of, like, automation scripts over the top, uh, which was sort of before robotic process automation was cool. Um, and I still remember, like, we, you know, I kind of did it on the side and it found out about it and they were a bit like, are you are you breaking rules here? Is this approved software. I’m not even sure. Um, and afterwards they sort of said, look, you know, you’ve saved us a quarter of a million dollars by running this process. Um, so we’re not going to stop you from using it, but no one else is allowed to use it, okay? So don’t give it to anyone else. Um, so, yeah, fast forward through my career in financial services, working across the whole stack of digital. Uh, I found myself working a lot in a or AIML like before. It was cool before it was cool to call it AI. Uh, we used to say like, oh, it’s machine learning. And that was the cool way to say that, you know, we use computers to help us with decisioning. Yep. Uh, and then eventually found a career in safety culture, uh, building a scale up there and trying to find that intersection between product and AI. That’s where I really found a lot of love for solving that dynamic of make something more valuable with AI. Um, so, yeah. And then after that decided like it was time for me to have even more impact. So left my job and just started building. And that’s what turned me into Haven first and really focusing on mental health. And then eventually, now here at Indy. Yeah. Nice. And you, you also studied, um, anthropology, which has, you know, really supported a lot of the, the insights and product and customer, um, that you’ve had when you’ve been building all these products, working in scale ups, becoming a founder of your organizations like talk to me about anthropology, what it is and how it has supported you in that journey. Yeah. Um, so it was a bit of a surprise, uh, course, that I ended up doing in anthropology. Um, but very quickly, sort of. I understood that to design products well, you need to understand the humans that use it and the experience that they go through. And this sort of isn’t a more fundamental theory than social anthropology. And how do cultures form and how do humans live within that sphere? Um, and one part of of the the theory is to to sort of understand this notion of like cultural relativism, which is this sense that if you live in a space, if you live in a society, you don’t really know what what’s the difference between your culture and other cultures until eventually you travel or you immerse in another space, then you can ask the real questions of what is the thing that makes my culture unique and true versus the thing that we’re seeing and experiencing, say, in the middle of Africa or in China. Um, and through that deep understanding, then you can start to articulate more deeper human needs. So one of those theories is called reciprocity. For example, the idea of exchange. Um, sometimes we do it for equal value. Sometimes we do it out of, uh, like just inherent, like one way. So like feeding a child, for example, you might give a child food. There’s no expectation of anything back. Um, or, you know, at a market you might exchange for a fair value, uh, or there might be this, like, deeper notion of negative reciprocity. Reciprocity, where, um, essentially someone’s trying to get the most amount of value out for the little smallest amount of exchange. And the reason why that part is quite interesting, even today, is that when you think about the products and services that we use, social media, AI, like sometimes people don’t always understand, like what is the relationship between what I’m giving and what I’m getting from the product? So they start to question that. And this rises up in this notion of like trust. Can I inherently trust the use of this service? Is it going to be worth me potentially giving up my data for or usage data to understand whether or not GPT can give me the answer that I’ve been looking for? Um, and it’s because we’re sort of treating AI as kind of like a human relationship as well. So I guess that’s where like for me, understanding how to how to unpick the deep needs of humans and articulating that in the modern world is quite a fascinating lens on on providing and defining value. It’s interesting. So particularly in my career, I’m working a lot in the CX and UX space that plays such a deep role. Um, you know, when you’re trying to understand the need of the product and how how it’s going to add value to the actual person, the people who need to use it. And you see too often a lot of organizations, they’re developing these products that they’re just developing for themselves. They have an idea and they’re just creating it, but they’re not addressing the core need of why the customer is using and then confused around why it’s failing in market, or why is no one, why is there no uptake, why aren’t people listening or watching or utilizing my thing? And it’s usually because of that misalignment or misunderstanding of that innate human need. Um, and that’s it’s really interesting how much anthropology plays into that, that role, that experience of the customer, for sure. Um, how obviously, with anthropology and a lot of the work that you’ve been doing, you know, with Haven and other things being very health, mental health and wellness kind of focus. Why such a passion in that space? Like what’s been driving? What’s the background that drives that decision? So, I mean, first of all, there comes a point in your career in financial services where you realize you’re probably not doing the best for humans all the time. Yeah. Um, because there are so many other problems that people go through that aren’t necessarily addressed by the services you can provide as a financial institution. So instead, you know, what are the things that affect us on a more daily perspective? What are the problems that we face every day and how do we how do we solve for that in a, in a in a new way? I guess that’s what really attracted me to mental health a little bit. Is that stuff that you’ve faced yourself as well? So a little bit is that just seeing like struggles at home for sure. Yeah. Um, struggles with dynamic within the broader family set and how. Because even though we’re sort of like I have a massive family, by the way. So, um, how many thirty cousins on one side? My mom has seven siblings and each of them are married. Yep. Um, so. And that’s just my mom’s side. My dad’s side has another twenty. Um, so my wife in the same boat. It’s completely different myself. Not like that at all. It’s coming in and seeing the dynamics of such a large family, like just right and crazy. It’s crazy because it feels like it is quite wholesome. And certainly as a child, like, everything was fine and daisies. But as I got older, I sort of realized, like, actually there’s a lot of friction in isolation in there. I could imagine, even just like the politics of family, when it gets to whoever is, who is the head of the family, who represents like the decisions that get made, like that dynamic in her family is like, incredible. Like, if someone makes a decision that the oldest, you know, seems. No, that’s not right. It can have like a ripple effect through the whole. It’s it’s insane. Yes. And like touching on anthropology for a second, there’s this concept of like, some cultures derive, um, hierarchy and importance from like, the mother side and the maternal side. And then there’s a paternal type cultures as well. Um, and interestingly, over time, they kind of shaped differently in terms of how, um, organizations and even like companies, for example, work together because of these underlying cultural biases or, or drivers, if you like, and how we respect people’s opinions and how we gather input and how we drive direction as well. So but yeah, going back to the family thing, um, yeah. Seeing I guess, struggles, um, you know, struggles that my parents were having quite often, for example, like it was not a quiet household, um, when we were coming home late from school. Um, so, yeah, always a theme on my mind. Like, how can I support my mum? And she she, you know, she’s not English is a second language. You know, there’s some barriers there to her getting access to support that we might find more acceptable these days. There’s obviously this feeling that she has where she feels like almost like innately like weak if she asks for help as well. Um, so even though we’ve tried to encourage her to get services like she has always gravitated towards, no. I’ll try and help myself. Um, and so that was kind of where the catalyst for something like Haven came to life, where it was. Well, if she’s already going to be seeking this out, how can how can I actually design for mum, you know, how can I build a product that will help her so that, you know, when she says, hey, Jeff, you know, going through this thing, uh, my personal biases aren’t affecting that as well because obviously there’s that, that, that kind of friction between me trying to be like a child, like her child, um, respecting her opinions and what she’s going through, but also being, like, supportive at the same time. Like, there’s a lot at play when you get asked to play that role. So yeah, that’s why I guess in my head, like, I certainly believe there’s this world where we can solve for better, Like mental companionship through technology. It’s creating that empathetic touchpoint, right? And the one thing I would say, even looking at it from my own family point of view, if I were to introduce tools to them, they would look at and be like, why would I need to use technology? Like, I’ve been getting on okay. I’ve been doing fine. It’s like, yeah, but are you seeing the disconnect that is occurring in your life? Whether it’s the relationship with your kids, your relationship with other people? Like these tools aren’t here to replace. They’re not to take over, but to, like, give you that support and guidance. It’s a very hard thing for them to accept. Mhm. Looking at that generation that older generation. Yeah. How have you found that even engaging with your mom particularly with Haven as you as you mentioned. Good question. Um, so initially I mean, I think I had a leg up here. So like, my mom used to ask me for like it support. Yeah. And there’s no greater challenge in IT support than when it’s your mum. Yeah. Honestly. Because when she’s asking for things, press the any key. Just press any key. And then as things are loading, you’re talking about. So how are you doing, Jeff? You know, like all the rest of your life comes into the equation. Um, so, no, thankfully, we do have a healthy relationship when it comes to technology, and mum’s always been fairly curious. Um, but I think she’s often looked at herself as, like, incapable. And I think that that stops her from trying sometimes. Um, what’s what was funny was actually on Mother’s Day this year, I was thinking about like, what made it special. And one of the things that made it special was we actually gave it to mum successfully for the first time. So it wasn’t the first time. Wow. Okay. Yes, but it was the first time she actually, like, used it of her own accord. How was that experience? Oh my goodness. Yeah yeah. So we I mean, first of all, we weren’t sure if she was actually using it, but then we started noticing long dashes in the family chat. And that was when it was like my sister said to me, so she’s writing. She’s like, I think mom’s using GPT. And I’m like, really? And she’s like, look over the messages again. There’s like no typos and like, I think you’re right. That’s it. So, um, yeah, to me, that was a measure of success because I think a lot of times, like she just didn’t like she would self filter out questions as well and try she might have thirty questions. She boils it down to just one or two. And I think this is where the human to human relationship can, can have a lot of like friction and barrier to getting the support that you need, because you don’t want to ask all the questions that you have, like you might be trying to protect something. Um, and the result of it is you. You may not ask the best question or a leading one, perhaps because you’re trying to protect their views. And the result of that is you’re not getting the support that you need. And everyone’s kind of just working off assumptions and biases. So, um, I have found that, yeah, it feels like she has a better sense of what’s going on like when we’re using because obviously we use terminology that she’s not familiar with, you know, our own lingo. Um, and it just it does feel like she’s just generally more like understanding of where we’re at. And I would say that’s like the soft sign of success. Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, and GPT, was it, um, growing up, I guess, in, in this family, was it hard like, and, you know, seeing the dynamics of the older people and not understanding stuff that’s going on. Was it hard for yourself as well in that? Yeah. So I’m actually like the middle of all these cousins. So like my older sister’s like six years older. My younger sister is seven years younger. And like in that age band I’m the only one. So my older sister has like ten cousins that my younger sister has the other twenty five there. So I kind of grew up sort of too old to play with the young ones and too young to play with the old ones. But what it meant was I kind of sat outside and kind of got to observe these things. Um, you know, what was it like being an Aids child and then going to uni in, like, early, like late nineties? Um, and, and then, you know, inheriting phones, right. Versus like, this whole generation who kind of who were born after the iPhone, which is insane. Um, but then to see that that difference in their confidence, who they were as individuals, their identities form and what represented their identities, these were things that were definitely quite different between these generations. Um, so, yeah, I don’t know if my, my cousins ever approved me talking about them, but but hopefully they talk about it from your experience. That’s fair. What’s that? So talk to me about Haven. What what was Haven and how did that how did you bring that to life, given the stuff that you would learn in this experience you had had? So, um, so it was early days, GPT, GPT had just been launched. And we sort of for us, it was a really quick question of. When I say us, I was working with my brother in law on the product. Um, keep it in the family. Keep it in the family. Um, he he confirmed that he has ADHD and he only discovered as an adult. Um, and it was really through his experimentation with the tool that he quickly realized that maybe there’s something here. Uh, vice versa. You know, my understanding of, like, GPT back then, it was like, okay. Yeah. If you if you shape the prompts, maybe you can turn something valuable out of this. If we build chain of thought reasoning through a bunch of like, Python scripts, we can start to make it feel more intelligent and aware of conversation over time. Yep. Um, and okay, that was a cool kind of build part, but what we really wanted to do was trying to understand, like, what type of who in the population is like, ready to actually try for this type of support. And we quickly saw like a whole bunch of university students were the ones they would start to engage with Haven. They would be asking questions about their assignments. They would be asking about like just love life in general and relationships because they were struggling. They didn’t know who else to turn to. Um, and we knew this because we had this. So everything was run out of discord, by the way. Um, so a bunch of discord bots, um, and but in that same community, we had a channel for feedback and they were starting to share, like some of their struggles, like screenshots where the messages were beautiful and like, well, well responded. And late at night, you know, two a m waking up with some stresses, um, and being able to share and get feedback on that was a powerful thing. Um, so really, that’s where we started and we started to build quite quickly in this space. But I think we also kind of felt like there was this responsibility to, to be to really understand what to do when, you know, when things aren’t so great. So like, we didn’t feel confident that it was enough to turn someone to like a suicide prevention line if they were starting to, you know, hint towards that direction. Obviously, we could solve that quite easily through technology, but we felt a strong sense of social responsibility that that might not be enough. Um, and so we started to wind back. The product coming in early can sometimes have an adverse effect, because that person can start to then push more away from that direction, like, hey, you should get some help. And that person, I don’t need help. I don’t want it, I don’t want it. No one should help me. Like, you can get into that headspace very, very easily. Right. Yes. So this is, I think, where, you know, perhaps we were trying to push a little bit too far with the technology and not respecting enough how humans still need to help each other and should. Yeah. Um, so that was part of the reason why we started to pull that product back. Um, because it wasn’t that it was insurmountable, but just more that the weight of that was was a bit much for us to, to carry. And obviously we went through our own mental health issues going through that? Yeah. Can you talk can you talk about those at all? Like what you were experiencing? Yeah. I mean, so people ask me like, what’s the startup journey life like? And I would say if you’re bootstrapping and you’re discovering it’s like a walk in the desert. Okay. So you have very limited resources. You know, you’re running out as you’re going because at some point you’ve there’s no more runway. Yeah. The hardest thing is you don’t know how much further in the journey it is before you make it. And so this sense of hope keeps you going, which is amazing. But there’s no real clarity as to when that goal will actually be hit. Obviously, there are signals along the way that encourage you. Absolutely. And that’s phenomenal. But there’s this other problem where as you’re going along, you look back and you think about all the steps that you’ve taken to that point, and you almost start to like, maybe it’s a mental health thing, start to imagine that it’s only going to be successful if it’s now three times bigger than the walk that I’ve had before. And you keep doing this like equation of like, the deeper I’m in this, the bigger the payoff it’s got to be to make it worth the years of journey that I’ve been on. Yeah. Um, that’s the isolating factor. And when you’re building something and then you encounter something where you feel such strong social responsibility, that’s when it all starts to collapse, right? Because you’re like, I can continue. But what if we do something that’s socially irresponsible? Um, in addition to the fact that we’re already like, you know, starving for air if, you know, like on this desert. So, um, and then mum comes in every now and then and she’s like, hey, Jeff, why don’t you just get a job at a, you know, waiting tables, which I, out of respect, like, and I have waited tables before. I think that’s where it came from. Like it was definitely from a good place mum. Thank you I appreciate you. But it also was like just such a difficult thing for me to explain to, like, the journey that I was on. Yeah. Um, and that for me, the only right thing to do was to persist. Um, but actually, actually one of my favorite words which is persist, persist, persist, particularly in entrepreneurial mindset. And as a founder, without that persistence, that strength to keep moving forward, no matter how hard it gets, if you don’t have that, it can be like you say it can. It can pull you down very, very quickly. And that persistence is often one of the most powerful things to get you through that little wall. Sometimes it’s like there is a light if you believe in what you’re doing. Yes, and I think that’s the power as well, of working in a space where you can help people with problems that are more present and daily in their lives. So whether it was Haven, mental health or now with indie um, and pediatric care and developmental care like persistence is easily found when when you get like beautiful feedback from parents sharing how they the product has already solved a problem for them, where they were stressed out in the middle of the night, needed some support and found it. And then we’re able to get to the hospital the next day. Um, quite smoothly as well. Uh, yeah. It’s I mean, it’s a beautiful thing and and that I guess that’s the difference between walking in the desert on your own and, and having those strong signals that you are on the right path. And that actually is not a desert. This is like a paved road. And you’ve just got to be persistent, consistent and then get to that outcome. It was uh, it was a time in, you know, this is going back many years. I was going through a career transition myself and my mentor at the time, and she, uh, she gave me her book and she put in the sticker in the back as part of a little blurb that she wrote. She says persist was her key word. And it literally, like, made me brought a tear to my eye at the time because it was something I needed. Sticker sits on my computer, like on my screen constantly. It just sits there. Persist. That’s all it says in a little circle thing that she just stuck on the book. Love it. That’s just the word that I always got there. It’s like, no matter what. Just if you believe it, just persist. Yes, it’s like a Ted Lasso moment. It is. Stick it on the thing. It is, isn’t it? I love it. That’s so true. Um. So, Haven, I guess it introduced you into that world of mental health from a, I guess from an entrepreneurial mindset. From a founder position. Tell me about that journey, that transition that you then went to bring indie to life? Yeah. So, um, I mean, essentially I was in the thick of the desert, um, suddenly feeling super lost because we couldn’t really continue, like from a social responsibility perspective on this path. We had to shut it down. Um, and our own mental health was kind of suffering from it as well. So yeah, started to try and build all a bunch of different AI products, but quickly realized, again, like building on your own is really difficult because there’s so many things you need to do when you’re not building the product, when you’re not talking to customers, then, Than, um, because you’re focusing on making sure you have runway or you’re talking to investors like, it means that your brain is so split into too many camps. Almost like having that support of a co-founder is actually quite a powerful thing, because not only do you have like a sense of like shared responsibility over the company, but you can have trust that someone has got it covered, whereas that solo founder journey like it just found like there were so many things I wasn’t doing and I couldn’t do because it’s like, do I solve the product today or do I try and, you know, gain some traction and excitement? Or do I go talk and validate my ideas with, with other founders, you know, at the edge, like there’s so many different things you could be doing. And when you do that alone, um, yeah, it can be incredibly daunting. So I think the realization for me was there’s a bunch of things that I’m not good at, um, that I’m sure like, I could find a co-founder who is amazing at and of which I now have. Um. So I’m now working with Oren. Yeah. How did you go about it? Yeah. So your co-founder decided to join the antler accelerator back in December last year. Um, and that actually started in February this year. Um, so our cohort was cohort thirteen. Initially, I actually went in thinking that I was going to lean on my experience in financial services and build a bunch of, like, insurance agents. Right. Replace the back office with a bunch of insurance agents, go through small business like there was a nice like go to market play there as well. Um, and actually got some good traction there to be to be fair. Um, but I would say like after after meeting Oren and then realizing that he was building a company for his daughter, it started to make me question like, hang on, is this the thing like that? You would just absolutely regret not working on because of the number of people you could help? But even still, if you just helped one child, that would mean so much more than one insurance company, if that makes sense. So yeah, that that realization was like the first part. The second was actually we do have incredibly complementary skill sets. And I would say some credit absolutely goes to antler here in that they they encourage us to find someone who can plug your gaps and perhaps not a typical founder you would pick. Yeah. So typically I would choose like a heavy or like a heavy product or heavy designer to partner with us. Maybe it’s a bit of my bias. It’s like like looking for like maybe. And so I would have struggled to find someone who was more commercial, someone who was more domain expert because of my inherent bias, like, build good product. Right? Yeah. Um, so, yeah, met him, um, saw his business plan and just how structured he was with making sure that we had oxygen for the journey. Um, but also, I would say it was like the second parent interview I did when the mother shared her journey and she started crying and we started crying because it was horrendous, right? Like the amount of gaslighting that was happening, the things that were being said to her. Can you talk about it? Yeah. So? So yeah. So she, um, so her child was around three, three and a half and she started to ask questions of like, you know, maybe there’s some developmental issues here. Let’s go talk to a doctor. And so when she finally got to a pediatrician after about six months of searching, um, the pediatrician said, yes, like there might be some neurodiversity here. Um, but actually, when he was a baby, like, did he crawl properly? Like, normally? And she was like, oh no, no, he used to kind of like scooch on his knees. We thought it was really cute. Yeah. And he said, that’s the first sign. You should have asked something. And so she sat down and she was like, oh my God, are you you’re saying like a year and a half ago, something I thought was cute was something I should have asked a question about. Like all this self-blame, all this self-hate that came out. Horrendous, right? And yeah, that’s like we broke down and cried like it was horrific. And yeah, that was the moment when I essentially got emotionally attached to this problem. Right. And it’s it’s almost like nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Because this is this is what impact means, right? Help one child and we’ve done we’ve done it. We’ve done a good thing for the day I love it, and they’re the future. That’s and you know, a lot of people sometimes blame the education system or the teachers. But at the core, the parents are the most influential, as we all know, are the most influential thing on a child. And there is often unnecessary blame put upon it for misunderstanding. And I think even in that scenario, if I look at, you know, having a child myself, looking at her development, I would have never thought to question something like that, and to blame someone for that is that’s. And it also shows. And this is something that we’ve come up a lot when I speak with people in the health who are going through building out incredible platforms and apps that are supporting people, um, going through whatever it is, um, is that there’s a huge part of empathy that seems to be missing between often specialists and whoever the patient is or the person who is supporting that patient. Yeah. And they often put blame in a language that is just not empathetic and it’s just comes across wrong. It puts so much pressure on families, parents, even the children, when really there was no blame. There was there was nothing that could have been done about it in the first place. It’s like it’s natural war. You can focus now is how do you move forward and how do you get the right support to do that? Absolutely. And I love that. This is what indie is kind of all about, is it’s about providing that support for parents who are going through these experiences. Um, tell me more about how indeed does that? How does it help these families? Yeah. So I think the first and foremost, the first thing we do is provide support for the parent. So there’s so many questions that, you know, a parent might have about their child. And you sort of if you are going through it like one of the first things you do is you kind of fire that question everywhere. You fire it to Google. You might mention it to one of your friends, you might mention it to your partner, but each time you know you encounter a human and you share that information, you’re actually weighing up your knowledge against what they see. And so what they see that is, is like a like a qualitative judgment where it’s like it’s a call on whether or not you’re right or wrong, as opposed to help me understand what I’m seeing. And so I think again, this is like that whole like social friction between humans, like creating a lot of barriers between accessing knowledge and understanding. Um, so the first layer of support is build an AI that can actually support the parent through their thinking and just even just like, articulate what it is they might be saying, seeing so that they can ask the right questions to the right people. Um, so early on in, in user feedback, it was, oh, this is beautiful, Jeff. Like, I can use this to just digest my thoughts, but help me explain it to my mum, right? Because my mum doesn’t really understand what I’m seeing, what I’m going through, like what the child’s going through either. Um, so how do I explain that to them? Good signals that I guess. Yeah. Our first challenge is to to solve for the parent and and the support there. The second is being able to be that trusted source for the child’s information, so the parent can carry it through any journey. So that would be, you know, could be school, it could be the medical industry, it could be allied health. Um, it’s really about capturing, you know, how the child shows up in different environments and having that in a central place where the parent can use that to represent what they’re seeing. Again, because oftentimes the journey of diagnosis is, is, you know, dots in time, you know, and correlation in time, but also how the child shows up in the moment. Um, and so that can be a lot really taxing on a parent when a pediatrician says, oh, take me through what you’re seeing here today, like with your child. Um, but the child is like having a good day and shows up fine. And so the pediatrician’s being served this evidence and this story from the parent, but it doesn’t weigh up with what they’re seeing. And so inherently there’s this like, well, look, just come back in three months. We’ll see how they’re going, seeing a moment in time rather than the whole picture. Right. It’s yeah. And so yeah, that’s absolutely like our second point of value is to, to provide the ability for a parent to represent the child’s story in the various moments where the child needs to be like described and their journey needs to be explained. Something I’ve always experienced is there’s such a varying, um, I guess every experience is unique for someone who has going through mental health, particularly things with neurodiversity and the works. They’ve all ebbs and flows. There’s the things that impact them, the what we necessarily, how we see and how we perceive how we are triggered in a particular moment. The things that shut us down versus that wake us up. Like everyone has different experiences, and that one person will be inspired to never want to put down a book, whereas another can’t get their faces off of a computer game or something like that. Everyone has these experiences in different formats. Um, how are you able to adjust to that diversity, particularly within mental health? Um, and with the AI tool that you’re building over the top of, of Indi. So I think this is the unique opportunity we have today where we’ve unlocked the ability to, as a as a society to build products that are hyper personalized to the individual. What does that actually mean? It means that we can capture elements of what? What drives them, what makes them who they are, and then tailor the product to that in a way that it’s not creepy. It’s more just like, okay, you generally prefer more like succinct answers or other people prefer more like detailed explanations, like little preferences like that, that are that we leverage in our product to adapt the experience overall. This is where I guess the the nuance of humans and individuals can actually become a positive thing where trust is actually built, because the intelligence actually works with their mental model and how their brain operates, and therefore it is a true co-pilot. And that’s why we see that as our kind of core metric of like, if we’re a true copilot in this experience, then a parent is able to trust us with their information, with their child’s data. What do you see people getting wrong about mental health, given the experiences that you’ve been on now and the stuff that you’re seeing coming out of the experience with Indy? Yeah. Um, I think it’s honestly it’s that people try and self solve. Yes, yes. The biggest challenge is that we try and solve, solve. And then through the process of self solving, the number one trick our brain plays is confirmation bias. And you know, whether we’re interfacing with like social media algorithms like LinkedIn for example, like I saw this post today around like a founder who was in a dark moment and she went online to LinkedIn and saw all this information that confirmed that she wasn’t moving fast enough, that she might run out of money one day. But those narratives, okay, part of it was the content being served to her and I guess her search or browsing history, but part of it was that her brain was actually looking for signals to confirm her feelings and her understanding, and this self solve piece is actually the thing that kind of interrupted her ability to to, I guess, not suffer through some mental health struggles, right? Negative bias. It’s like it is actually a particularly since the dawn of the internet and social media. Your it is so easy for you to look up something and get so focused on the negative, rather than look at the positive like the the black and white. The easiest black and white example is like the flat earth or you know, you know, not getting not having your injections and stuff like that. Like you can get so down the rabbit hole of negative rather than focusing on what are the positive outcomes. Because again, you’re you’re serving a bias. And that’s how you end up with misinformation and all that type of stuff, which obviously from a mental health perspective is exactly the same kind of impact. All right. What about the flip side. So that’s what we get wrong in ourselves. What about for the people outside in who don’t necessarily suffer from mental health or aren’t seeing anything, who are seeing others going through it? What’s one of the I guess, what do people often get wrong as an outsider looking looking in? Uh, I mean, the number one thing that I mean, even I do, um, absolutely. And I think a lot of humans do is, is try to solve for the human. Um, um, so oddly enough, it’s like the one part of the equation is don’t self solve, but the other is if you’re the other person, don’t solve for them. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Where does that actually leave you? I think I think what’s in the middle and what people are actually looking for is just connection, right? And connecting on a level that is empathetic isn’t about like, serving an answer necessarily. Um, and really is just like hearing what they’re going through. And that that again, kind of goes back to this earlier point around like, we, we, we humans suck at communicating. Like, yeah, we really do. We really do, we really do. There’s so many questions you have and there’s only so many. You ask another human, so you’ve already pre-filtered. And when you do it, you can sometimes be so tailored, like mum, um, that you’re trying to add to all these other questions with this one, you know, why didn’t they invite me to dinner? Question. Right. But what she’s actually asking is like, do my do my siblings still enjoy spending time with me? Or underneath that, you know, did I did I offend them in some way? Did I break that trust in our relationship in some way? But like all that comes down to like, why didn’t they invite me to dinner that night? Um, so, yeah, this, this, this kind of I mean, essentially, like she’s been led down this path by that self solve again. Right? And she’s asking in a way that makes me elicit an answer for her as well. So there’s so many dynamics at play here that cause that, um. Yeah, difficulty with getting the right support for mental health. So what can people do better I guess is the. Is the question. Yeah. So yeah, honestly it is lending that ear, um, like this is why we love are you okay day because it is a powerful thing and we don’t ask that question enough in an open way. Yeah. Um, but are you okay? Is this. There’s actually a couple layers to it. I think a younger, more naive version of myself was just asking the question to open the door. I think that’s absolutely powerful. But there’s actually a different form of open the door, which is make it safe to talk about the topic, if that makes sense. So one, open the door is I’m here, I’m present, I’m ready to listen. The other is actually, you may have been holding on to something for a while, and it’s going to be okay without judgment that you share this. So my co-founder spoke about this. Hopefully it wasn’t incompetence, but this notion that, like, he’s in a group chat with some old friends of his and a lot of them have kids now, but obviously he’s suffering like a difficult journey with one of his kids, and they’re sharing stories of like, you know, wonderful times that they’re having. And he just he’s always questioning, should I share this? How horrendous three a m was last night. Will that tear everyone down and will that turn me into, like, the sob story? Yeah. Will that draw all this attention away from the group? But then again, I do want to share. And so like that’s a different type of opening the door if that makes sense, where it’s like not not not letting people just put the covers on everything versus um, yeah. What I used to think. Are you okay? It’s a point where narrative is really important in that scenario, right? Because you’re right. He could talk all about. He could just be like, I just want I just want everyone to feel bad about me. So that’s not his approach. He wants to create a positive narrative around his experience, which is good. And you know, you see it with a lot of mental health and a lot of, um, you know, even more so with women when they go through pregnancy and all these other things. There’s so much of a journey that they go from, and it’s just a big misdemeanor around talking about it. And then they experience this thing and they’re like, why isn’t anyone talking about why didn’t anyone tell me about this? It happens so much in mental health as well. Um, so true that communication. Right? It’s such a thing that we are bad at as as people. It’s. Yeah. Um, you touched on the Ruok day thing, and so from my family background, it’s the tension of relationship has always been with my father. That’s where that’s that’s where a lot of the issues and conflict have always come from. And he he’s obviously the relationship has improved over time, especially as I’ve grown up. And you know, we tend to understand each other a lot more now. But he did call me up the other day, and he asked if I was okay, and I was just like, I was like, what’s what’s happening right now? Like, I don’t think you’ve ever asked me this in my whole life. But it was it was a very overwhelming moment and experience like that communication from someone who I think growing up, I haven’t really seen too much empathy coming back. And I was just like, it was it was beautiful. And, you know, it took me back. So I think asking that question and communicating, as you said, is so important. It’s so crucial. Yeah, I love that. Did you get a sense of like what triggered him to ask? Or. I think, uh, so am I currently my my family life. We’re going through some, some hard things, not stuff that I would say is like, you know, anything life threatening or, you know, relationship ending. It’s just a moment kind of struggles that a lot of families go through this early time. And I think he was seeing as the. And for me, it’s more understanding the pressure is on my partner. And so all the questions were being asked around her. And I think my dad saw that okay. You know, she’s needing the support, but, you know, how are you doing? And I think that was his him trying to open up going you know I get it. Let’s have a talk. How are you doing? That was. That’s beautiful. It was nice. It was good. Yeah. Um. Going back to Indy, like. There’s so much potential with this. The world of AI that has come in. And I love how you have taken advantage of, you know, a technology which kind of has a bit of a usually a bit of a do we really want it to, to do with health and wellness? You know, is it going to say the right thing at the right time and you’re able to close those doors, which is nice. Nice. But you see also outside of that, this is happening a lot in particularly in China, um, where people are relying on the basic forms of LM from mental health perspective. How are you trying to separate yourself from, I guess, the negative aspects of people using tools for the wrong reason to treat themselves? As we’ve said, that is not a right thing to do versus what India is doing. Yeah. Um, first things first, a quick quote, by the way. Uh, so meta designer at Canva. Uh, and it turns out a whole bunch of people turned to Canva for mental health support. Canva AI. Wow. Really? Um, and the rationale behind that was that as a brand, it was more safe to chat to and potentially the workplace GPT. Yep. So it works. Paying for Canva. Canva, you get Canva, AI works paying for GPT. You got struggles. I’ll talk to Canva. Yep. Um, which, yeah, I think it’s a completely un defined space on where we get help and if we should or shouldn’t from AI. And there’s a lot of risk. And this is essentially why we turn away from Haven, right? That if you get it wrong, like negative impacts are, are so real. Yeah, definitely. Um, so a lot of the job of Indy is actually. And building Indy is the guardrails. How do we build the right protections in place for the people using it so that they can get the help that they need? Um, and so one framing that we have around that is like the job of like of Indy isn’t to take away from what humans do best. It’s maybe it is some of the process, maybe it’s some of the annoying bureaucracy, but it’s actually to enable humans to be human again and to strengthen the human to human ties. So we think about that whole notion of like humans are struggling to communicate to other humans, but we help them reflect in a way that means that when they do use those moments that they are the hyper effective and they get the help that they need, then we’ve done our job, you know. So we aren’t trying to say that you should turn away from all your connections, and we’re actually trying to restore them and improve them. Tell me, tell me, what’s the usage of like, how does someone go around using indie talk about the actual customer experience? Yeah. So web mobile you can access indie. Uh, and essentially it’s it’s a chat. It’s a chat for you, uh, with our intelligence. Um, and you can talk about any topic. Um, there is a slight bias towards talking about your child because we are trying to solve for that specific use case. Yeah. Um, but as parents share information, um, indie starts to tailor the experience and the conversation to what they’re going through, what they’re seeing, um, perhaps explaining terminology, uh, perhaps, uh, sharing different ways they can access certain types of help. So oftentimes there’s an awareness issue of like, oh, um, you know, what does a speech therapist do? It turns out speech therapy isn’t just the spoken parts. There’s also like nonverbal communication that they get involved with. And early on, it’s like pointing and it’s reaching and it’s turn taking. There are these dynamics of speech that, you know, I guess it wouldn’t be obvious if someone said, oh, you need to go see a speech therapist that you would naturally think of. So, yeah, when it comes to the indie product itself, yeah, parents are engaging with it largely through chat, um, sharing data, sharing information. Um, and we’re helping to store that in a reliable way so that they can move through different services and, and support with other humans. Amazing, mate. I’m conscious of time and I’ve got some quick fire round questions for us that I’d love to to unpack. And as a, I guess, a founder and an entrepreneur, what kind of tools are you you finding most beneficial to, you know, building your business and, you know, delivering on your eye on your work tools. Um, okay. So I am loving notion AI and notion itself, uh, for the reason that it’s just a common place for us to share information and exchange. Um, so that’s not going to be hugely revolutionary, but I guess, like, um, yeah, single platform for all of that is quite nice because what we actually do is we, we tie in some agents, work off the back of that so we can quickly build some product. Um, so that’s. Yeah, quite beautiful obviously. Claude code. Yes. Claude code is like, I wouldn’t say it’s my friend, but it definitely understands a lot of what I need to do. Um, so bouncing back and forth and just iterating on that, prototyping. Prototyping. Um, if you could go back to the beginning before Indy, before Haven even start again, what would you do differently? Yeah. Um, Have this honest conversation with myself that maybe you don’t need to solve all your problems on your own, and you can look for other ways to get support. In particular a co-founder. That would be the one. We had a great conversation with someone just recently, and one of the answers they had to that question was very similar. It’s don’t rush into getting a co-founder that is just there with the big the big name, the big title, the big dollars. It’s like building culture from the ground up is really crucial. And if you have that co-founder who’s coming with a good journey on you, who’s not in it for the fame and the money, you’re going to have the best outcome and the best experience. Love it. Um, what advice do you have? Two tinkerers and entrepreneurs, particularly in this world of AI now, where you can pretty much build anything you want at the at the few types of of a button. What advice would you have for them who are trying to figure out how to start their journey as entrepreneurs? Uh, I think the biggest, the best way to learn is obviously to learn by doing, learn by trying, but actually learn by trying, by building a bunch of non-complementary things. Because it’s only when you build technology in different spheres that you understand what are the nuances that make it successful in different industries and for different use cases and for different therefore customer needs. So in other words, go wide, go fast. Love it. Break things. No, Jeff, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us everyone Jeff Quach. Like and subscribe. See you in the next episode mate. Ah well done.