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Andrew Warner: What’s your revenue?
Ben Cera: 10 million run rate.
Andrew Warner: You built an AI that launches companies. What do you say to people who call them all slop?
Ben Cera: I think people don’t understand how the product works.
Andrew Warner: Did people take advantage of your system?
Ben Cera: Of course, yeah. Got weaponized.
Andrew Warner: Would you do screen share and show me your revenue in Stripe?
Ben Cera: I mean Presented by Zapier, the AI automation
Andrew Warner: company. What’s your annual revenue right now?
Ben Cera: Uh, 10 million run rate.
Andrew Warner: Okay. What do you say to people who say, “It’s not annual recurring revenue. It’s a run rate. You took your last 30 days, you multiplied it by 12. The people who are signing up are not really recurring”?
Ben Cera: I mean, so, so to be clear, like, there’s a lot of different revenue streams on Pulsar. There’s, like, uh, a base subscription. Then there’s, like, uh, people buying add-ons, you know, like they, they may be buying, uh, ads, running ads that are, like, recurring every day. They may be, um, buying more, uh, tasks, either one-off or through subscription.
Um, they are buying custom domains that are yearly, uh, subsc- subscription, you know, yearly renewed, uh, et cetera, et cetera. And so all those cash flows are all hitting Pulsar bank account. Okay. And the idea with a, a run rate is that, like, you, you take the past 30 days of revenue, either so it would be recurring or you take, uh, one-off payments and you look at the past 30 days and you analyze it.
That’s why, that’s why Entropic, for example, also talks about an annual run rate and are recurring because they have subscriptions, but they also have revenue coming from one-off, like, API consumption. But then that volume is then annualized.
Andrew Warner: But I guess the big concern is that people are saying that you have a big churn.
Do you? What’s the churn?
Ben Cera: Uh, I mean, the churn is, like, uh, around 50% on m- month one, which is, you know, I think for, for, uh, an autonomous product that, like, people, you know, use and, you know, so different people have different expectations on what it does. Uh, I think it’s not the worst in the world.
Andrew Warner: Mm-hmm.
Ben Cera: Uh, I think obviously it’s like a novelty, so some people try it and then they decide not to stick.
I think what I see most is that, like, people that, like, have– Uh, the less technical you are, the more you love a product like this, right? Because usually you’re not technical, you have another job, and then now this lets you try to become a founder, right? Uh, which is something very beautiful, right? It’s like, you know, here in Silicon Valley, everyone’s a founder, everyone’s a tech founder, everyone knows technology.
Everyone’s raising– trying to, trying t- to be able to raise capital, a seed round or pre-seed round. And then you go to the 99% and, like, you know, they don’t, they don’t have access to that. They don’t– They can’t even aspire to that. They just see that on TV or they see that in the news. And so what Pulsia does is give them access to tools that can enable them to be a founder by having an AI that autonomously does things for them, that sends them an email every day, that believes in their idea, that, like, helps them navigate, like, what it means to build a company.
And, and so, yeah, some people sign up and decide to churn because they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t like the experience,” and some people stick. I think that’s like any product. And of course, I wanna bring that better over time. Uh, I’m trying to introduce lower pricing, ’cause I think $50 is expensive for a lot of people, uh, so trying to bring that down.
I’m– I wanna do a freemium experience where, like, you can actually experience Pulsia building for you, um, in a free experience. And so all of this to me is a way to educate more people about what- agentic AI is, which is something that’s gonna take over the world, that’s gonna be heavily used by, like, the, the know, the knows, the people who know, like the you and me, the
Andrew Warner: 1% And you’re saying, “I wanna, I wanna bring this down to more people so they have an AI-based business, a business that’s run with AI.”
When you say it’s 48% churn, there’s, uh… Who is it? Is it a user on Twitter called Not On Ketamine that did this big report on Pulsia. They said it’s 48% a month. Does that mean month number two also has a 48% drop-off, and month number three also?
Ben Cera: So mo- month two, last time I checked, was also, yeah. Uh, I don’t know how they go the numbers though, but anyways.
Uh, yeah, month two, last time I checked, was, like, was another 50%. Uh, I, I don’t have enough data to… And the g- uh, since the product launched pretty recently, there’s not a ton of depth in the data. And since I also get those big spikes of users who try the product when I do those, uh, Twitter, uh, marketing stunts, which you, you…
We met at the first one, and now it’s the second one, and they work really well. You get a lot of people just try the product, right? And some people stick, some people don’t stick. Um, you know, I think that retention, it’s like, I don’t think it’s horrible. I think that, like, it’s actually not bad for a product like this that’s so novel.
Honestly, the product works, but it doesn’t work well enough for my taste and, like, and to me, there’s so much stuff that could be better. The engi- you know, engineering agent should be much better at building, uh, products ’cause if you let an engineering agent just vibe code its way into building, uh, something complex, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be hard at one point for it to navigate the code base.
And so working a ton right now on making it much more modular, much better so that, like, it can actually be much better at creating clean code Um, and so to me it’s like, you know, churn is n- is, is, is, uh, it just tells you that like, you know, there’s always gonna be churn in consumer products, right? Um, the question is like, is churn getting better over time?
And that’s my work. And, and my, and my work is also– I’m okay if, if people churn as long as like they also discovered what, uh, agentic is, and now they can decide to maybe use a, a product that’s more fitted for them. Maybe they wanna switch to Clockcode, they wanna… But it’s like it’s important to educate the most people possible and understanding what’s possible- Mm-hmm
because agentic is here to stay, and it can really empower people to build great things.
Andrew Warner: What do you think are the top three things that need to be changed about Pulsia?
Ben Cera: Well, it– first of all, I think that, like, it needs to be cheaper. That’s number one. Uh, I think it’s very important if, uh, because my mission is to empower- Mm-hmm
the 99% to use those tools. So if I make it expensive, it’s just there’s a more barrier to entry. That means a lot of people that like– Uh, it’s gonna be more difficult for them to access it. So I, I spend a lot of work because ag- A-AI is really expensive, right? You know, if you, if you try to hit Anthropic, OpenAI APIs- Yeah
yes, they are the best models. They’re extremely expensive. You know, you, you see the reports on people using OpenClau and saying, “It’s charging my credit card like 100 bucks a day,” right? Mm-hmm. So that’s what you get if you really use AI autonomously. And so doing a ton of work to like trying to explore more affordable models, buying my own GPU infrastructure in order to like being able to run models, run my own models, that can be much more affordable for what I’m trying to do.
So that’s number one. And so those– That’s, that cheaper, more affordable AI enables me to do a free version, do like a much l-l-less expensive version so that more people can play with it. ‘Cause it’s a game, right? It’s a game. You build a business, and it’s more of a game than like initially, ’cause it’s trying to educate people in building things, right?
Andrew Warner: I see. Yeah.
Ben Cera: So that’s, that’s one big, big factor. I think the second factor- Lower
Andrew Warner: price. Yeah
Ben Cera: Second one is, like, really the engineering agent, right? So, like, Pulsar as an engineer should be much better, right? I think initially it was mostly s- giving it like a, sort of like a, a very open-ended express app, right?
Which is Node, which is JavaScript, which is like, you know, AI knows well how to build on it. But it was sort of building like spaghetti, like, code as AI can do sometimes. And so p- it would, it would work, but, like, it gets frustrating for users because they’re like, “Well, build me authentication, build me a checkout flow, build me an admin portal,” and had to reinvent the wheel all, uh, all the time.
And so I think what I’m really working on right now is, like, creating the infrastructure and modules so that, like, the engineering agent doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel when it wants to create, uh, sort of like- That makes sense … a new, a, a new, a new app, right? And so that will enable people to spend less money and time getting to the end MVP that they have in mind, and then decide, “Oh, I love it.
Okay, I think I want to market it more.” Or, “You know what? My idea in my head actually, when I see it f- completed,” uh, s- which happens sometimes, you know? Right. Before building Pulsar, I built five different apps. And I would– each time I was like, “Yeah, I spent two months working on this, but I don’t think it’s the…”
Yeah, I give it to a few people, but I, even myself, I don’t feel it, right? And that’s okay. It’s part of entrepreneurship, right? And I think the third bucket is, like, marketing tools and giving it more capabilities. I think there’s like, it’s like, you know, I think that, like, I try to give Pulsar all the tools that, like, are the common playbooks, right?
It’s like, um, like running ads, like tweeting, like, uh, r-running, you know, s- trying to find prospective customers and sending them an email, right? Yeah. That’s thoughtful. When it’s done at scale, it, it changes the game, right? When it’s empowered at scale. And the question becomes, how do you take each of these channels and you make them more tasteful and more, and g- have more guardrails so that, like, it, it’s a net positive and it actually works?
And so I think there’s a lot of work doing, uh, that I need to do there. I’m actually partnering with a lot of startups that are fully focused on those areas so that I can have full-time teams that are making Pulsar better by integrating into their product, right? So I think those are the three main bu-bu-buckets of, of, of stuff that’s high, high priority for me right now.
Andrew Warner: What do you think or what do you say to people who say that the site creates slop? Like, you create a webpage. In fact, you and I– Oh, I saw your face twitch as I asked you that question. You and I- It’s all good … last time we talked and I said, “Would you show me how to build a site?” And you did. You actually, you did a screen share.
You showed me how it built a site, and the site looked a lot like another site that I saw, which looked like another site that I saw, and it’s like this cookie cutter-ish looking thing. Is it AI slop that’s creating without taste, without heart, without variability, without a direct connection to what the user and their customers need?
Ben Cera: So, so here’s the thing, right? And I think people don’t understand how the product works because they either just do the onboarding or they just look at like the live page and they, they, they conclude there, there and then. But essentially The best way to explain a product is to show people with the minimal friction possible what it does.
That’s the onboarding of Pulsar. You sign up, you click on Get Started, start a company. It surprised me. You give your email, and then you have an agent who starts working, who researches you on the internet to see what you do, what you care about. It looks at– It comes up with an idea. It looks up, like, a market, the market to see you, to create a market research.
It, it, like, it tweets about your new idea. It sends you a– It creates a mailbox and, and, and, and it, it creates a mailbox for you and sends you- Yeah … a welcome email to tell you, “Hey, your mail, you know, company email is ready.” It, it creates a, a, a URL, a name of a company and a URL- Yeah … and creates a landing page.
That’s the– That’s sort of like the magic, and there’s a really high conversion of people are like, “Wow, that’s crazy. Now I want to start a free trial and give it a, an actual try.” And then once you do the free trial, then you can tell the AI, “Actually, build my MVP,” okay? I don’t want a landing page, I want MVP.
And then you can tell the AI, “Actually, I don’t like the colors. I want you to change the colors. I want you to change the font. I want you to do this.” And of course, I could make it better. I could– But that onboarding is AI autonomously just doing things. Now, you may say, “I could definitely give that AI, like, a, a design skill and, like, and, and, and give it, like, more fonts,” and then maybe ask the user before, “A, w– tell me what you like first so that, like, on that first go, I actually create something that’s more personal than if…”
Right? But the thing is, if I did that, there’ll be lower conversion and there’ll be less people trying it out actually, right? So it becomes like a, you know what? My goal is to get as many people, uh, as possible to experience this onboarding flow, and then they- Okay … can decide, “Wow, I’m in,” or, “Whoa, I’m out.”
Right? And then they decide. They take the personal choice of like, “AI is not for me,” or, “This is crazy. I gave it this idea, and it gave me this, this first… I saw it work on my idea, on my idea.” And that’s why when I talk to customers in person, that’s what they’re– They tell me, “This is magic.” It’s like I gave it my idea, and it created a…
The same way I would go to any, uh, dev agency, and it would create a… I’d say like, “Hey, give me a website. I have 100 bucks.” And it would create a landing page, and it’d be like, well, what… If you go to Squarespace, right, and you create a landing page, they kind of– If you use the template, the base template, they all look the same.
If you go to Shopify and create a Shopify, and you choose to use the base templates, they all look the same. But that empowers, that empowered millions of people to create an e-commerce site. And then after you pay 30 bucks a month on Shopify, and then you have access to custom templates, and then you can change the font, and you can rearrange things.
I see. You can import your photos. And so I think people, they look at the live dashboard, they look at the five last companies that got created in the past minutes. Yes. And they’re all the same landing pages. Yes, because I, I, I don’t, I, I don’t build Opus, I don’t build the, the AI models, and I don’t know how to tell AI to be original each time.
Unfortunately, Anthropic and OpenAI, if you ask them to design stuff, they, they kind of narrow their thinking.
Andrew Warner: But- I feel that completely, by the way. It all looks the same when I use Claude. Even when I use Claude Design, it gives it me the same cream-colored look. And you’re saying, okay, that’s fine for a first version.
In fact, it’s intentional to some degree. But is the latter version of the site still slop? Like, are you actually creating sites that, that are worthy of showing on your homepage and saying, “Look, these are our customers. This is the businesses. This is what their sites look like.” Is it at that level?
Ben Cera: So, so there’s two things, right?
Right now, like when you create a company on Pulsia, it’s a private company, right? Mm-hmm. And so some people, they don’t want, they don’t wanna share it yet. Like, you know, like 90% of businesses, they don’t have m- they don’t make money yet, right? Or they don’t make, they don’t… They have zero revenue, right?
Mm-hmm. And so is it for me to just share those companies publicly? It’s not my company. It’s like, you know, some people say, “Hey, uh-” Do you see companies
Andrew Warner: that are making a profit? Like you can see their revenue, right? Or can you see a company that’s doing five, $10,000 that we can showcase?
Ben Cera: So I, th- there’s companies that make, like the, the max com- revenue I saw in a company is like, uh, a few thousand dollars, like three, three, $4,000, right?
Okay. Um, there’s 10% of companies that made at least a dollar. Uh, are they profitable? That’s a different question, right? It’s like, well, uh, I’d have to look exactly their token use, but also like how much sweat, sweat they put into it. Did they do actual external marketing? Even if you just take
Andrew Warner: away rev- expenses and say revenue wise, it seems surprisingly low to find re- companies that are doing three, four, $5,000, even though it has been two, three months.
I get that. But you have thousands of companies on the platform. I would’ve expected even more, wouldn’t you? More companies to have done more than $10,000. You have what? 8,791.
Ben Cera: So you, so you’re saying it’s low? I mean, I don’t necessarily agree. Uh, I think that like, you know, I spent, I spent 2025 building like four businesses.
Three of them made $0. Uh, well, I think one may be $10. And then another one I had to spend ads and it made like, I don’t know, a, a few hundred bucks MRR. And I’m a seasoned entrepreneur. I don’t think it’s that easy to just, you know, ma-make money online. And actually, yeah, you can make money on Polymarket.
You, you, you just bet on red and on blue, and then you can make a 10X, right? You can make money on crypto. You can make money on, on betting on, like, GameStop. But when it comes to building businesses, it’s a d- it’s a different game, right? It’s like– And thinking that people will just magically make millions of dollars, that’s not my aim.
That’s not what I’m trying to sell. What I’m trying to sell is like autonomous tool to build any idea you have, um, and to provide the tools, right? I’m a, I’m a, I’m a platform and I’m a tool. Um, you know, like, I wouldn’t say, like, people that are making, like, money on, you know, a few hundred dollars, a thou- a few thousand dollars on platform, I wouldn’t say like, “Oh, that’s no good,” right?
I would rather empower people to like, in a month, like do a few, you know, start getting revenues. That, that means that they created value. That means they got another customer to pay for their service. That also they’re learning about like what it means to have customers. Um, I think that’s amazing. Um, and, and we, we only at the beginning, and I think the platform needs to get much, much better at a lot of things.
And, you know, it’s like, it’s a lot of work. It’s– Autonomy is crazy. It’s so expensive that like, you know, I spend a lot of time just reducing costs. Else I would just go out of business really fast, right? Um, I think, you know, that when I, when I hear like Shopify stats, people take like, oh, 18 months, I think, to, uh, to turn a profit, I think, on Shopify.
I think someone told me that’s that, right? And only like less than 10% of business on Shopify make money. So it’s like- I think that like, you know, people expecting like AI to magically make businesses just work is a, is a fantasy and is something I’m trying to sell, right?
Andrew Warner: I just checked with Gemini. I just did a quick search on Google to see how long does it take a Shopify store to, uh, to turn a profit.
They say six to 12 months to achieve net profitability. While your first sale might happen in the first two to four weeks, breaking even takes four to eight months. Um, and I, I, I agree. It does take a while, and I also understand that there are a lot of people who spend months just setting up their sites and never even launch them.
What about a showcase? Would you be willing to put a showcase up where people can, if they like their site, can show it to show off what the Pulsia sites look like? ‘Cause right now, what I do like about you, and I, I’m always shocked by how you do this, you’re very open. I can go into the AI and I could s- I could see what companies it launched recently.
I can ask it, “Hey, give me a URL of a company,” which, which I just did, and it gave me a few URLs of companies. But I feel like I’m not getting like the curated collection of what’s possible, you know? To look at and go, “Ah, now I can elevate my view. I could, I could see what I could build on this platform.”
Ben Cera: Yeah. And, and, and I think it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s something that like, uh, I wanna build. It’s, a- and essentially it would be f- a marketplace feature where essentially I tell the user, “Hey, um, you are putting your dashboard publicly,” right? So now you’re sharing all your stats, all your revenue- Ooh … all your visitors.
I don’t even know that you
Andrew Warner: need to do that. Even if you just say, “Look, share how beautiful your site is that we built and the business is,” that would be interesting. Just see a showcase of, of companies.
Ben Cera: That, that’s, that’s true. But like, uh, y- I could tell the user, “Hey, put it publicly on the random site.
That’s fine.” What I’m more interested in is like, “Hey, you built a site. You built a, either a business that makes money, doesn’t make– makes money or doesn’t. By the way, doesn’t have to make money, and then you can sell it to someone else on a marketplace.” Ah. I think that’s very interesting because that means that like people, they could be builders, and it can be people that like, for example, someone has more marketing dollars or maybe someone has like influence.
Mm-hmm. And they can go to a marketplace and find ready-made businesses, sites, that can just, just buy, and then they own it, and then they can market it themselves. I think that’s, you know, just doing a showcase, yeah, I could. I mean, I’m starting to like talk to a lot of customers, and I put them on Twitter, and I share, you know, share their stories.
That’s my way to sharing. You know, uh, yes, I could share their site as well. Um- I could. Yeah, I mean, th- to me, the marketplace feature is what’s gets interesting, is like asking people, “Hey, do you wanna put– Is your website ready, and are you ready to showcase it, and put your username next to it, and get feedback on it, and maybe get someone to ask you questions and maybe buy it?”
I think that’s an, that’s an interesting way to ask the user base, “Hey, here’s a new feature where you can showcase your work.” Um,
Andrew Warner: and yeah. And potentially get a buyer. And for viewers like me, it kind of has a self-selection mechanism where if you just created a thing that you’re not ready to show anyone- Exactly
then you wouldn’t put it on the platform.
Ben Cera: Exactly.
Andrew Warner: Okay, I get it. Are there any now that I can look at? Any that come to mind right now? I guess you’ve tweeted them out and I just haven’t seen them.
Ben Cera: Yeah, I mean, there, there’s like a bunch of like different business. I mean, it’s like, uh, me, me sharing actual individual business of a user that’s not me- Mm-hmm
um, I would have to ask their, their permission to like showcase it, right? Because I can talk to a customer, but like sharing their business, I don’t know if it’s pri- you know, if it’s private or not, right? Okay. But I think, I think that’s something that pe- a lot of people are asking, and like I’m gonna start to like showcase them on Twitter and showcase businesses.
I’m really focused on that marketplace where like it’s an opt-in and it’s like, it, it’s, there’s an actual value for users versus me just sharing businesses. But I think that’s, uh, that’s a good point.
Andrew Warner: Okay. Uh, oh, this kind– This is silly, but it comes up so much. Why is your name spelled backwards, uh, Aislop?
Ben Cera: I mean, there, there’s two, there’s two coins of that, right? So the, the, the name of the company came about, um, when I started the company in April 2025. N- I didn’t start the product Pulsia. I started the- Mm-hmm … C corp, right? So my lawyer– my lawyers were like, “Hey, you need to come up with a C corp so that we can register you on Delaware.”
And I was like on my couch at 11:00 AM or 11:00 PM or 10:00 PM, I remember in Paris, and I was like, “Uh, Pulsia, Aislop backwards. That’s fun.” And ’cause I was like, it doesn’t matter. It’s like a C corp, you know? Oh, you literally
Andrew Warner: thought that. It wasn’t just a coincidence?
Ben Cera: I mean, of course. I mean, that, that would be crazy coincidence, dude.
Andrew Warner: Okay. No, I thought it was called Pulsia with a U in the beginning, uh, too. No, no, no. Wasn’t it? No. Okay.
Ben Cera: No.
Andrew Warner: Pulsia- Wow. So this was a thing. Yeah. And it didn’t bother you that you were gonna like call, call your company Aislop backwards?
Ben Cera: Well, it’s Ais for Aislop backwards, and the whole concept when I explained it to investors when I was raising the pre-seed, is like we’re aiming at doing the opposite of slop.
We’re trying to like create- I see … tools that outputs beauty that output great things that empower humans, and it’s not slop, but it will be focused on AI doing the work, right? So obviously, uh, when AI does the work, people call it slop, right? But everyone who uses CloudCode, are they calling themselves slop masters?
No, they’re saying, “No, because I’m guiding the A- CloudCode, so it’s me.” I’m like, “Well, when people use Pulse AI, they guide an AI also.” Uh, and so, yeah, I mean, so that was the origin story. It was just me being like, “I need a name.” When I decided to– Initially, Pulse AI was called Company OS. That was the initial name, and I came up with it, uh, when I, I was in Mount Fuji and I got really inspired about this idea of, like, having an AI be my team, ’cause I was solo building.
Andrew Warner: Mm-hmm.
Ben Cera: And it’s really hard to be solo, right? And so I was like, “Oh, what if I created a Company OS where I would have AI, I have a bunch of team members, and it would report to me every day about what happened, and, like, I would give them my ideas, they could execute on it,” right? So that was in April, and it was Company OS.
So I actually built Company OS for a long time, and then in October, I was like, I was so tired of building all this SaaS, and I was like, “You know what? Let me build– Let me go to the end state. Let me start to have fun with it. Let me build this crazy idea of, like, building a company that makes companies.”
And then I was like, “How should I name it?” And I was like, “Well, the, the C corp is called Pulse IA.” And honestly, it could be a cool name. And honestly, it’s fun. And honestly, the– I can get the .com. And then I tried to get the .com and I got it for 1,000 bucks. And I was like, “You know what? It’s a sign.” ‘Cause 1,000 bucks is, is not that, is not that expensive for, like, a, a-
Andrew Warner: No
Ben Cera: six-letter.com, six-letter .com. And I was like, “You know what? It’s a sign that I got the .com. You know what? That’s a great name, and let’s go.” And honestly- It’s great because it makes people talk, and, like, it’s so hard to get eyeballs on your product. And so the fact that, like, this– for a second time, I blew up on Twitter, and both times people are like, “It’s AI spelled backwards,” and it creates so much noise, is amazing ’cause it’s like, dude, you’re buying free marketing, right?
Uh, and, and I don’t think it bothers me because my customers don’t care. When I meet customers, that’s– they don’t even mention it. They don’t even– They only mention the design, that people say, “The design is too childish. It looks like, uh, sh- it looks bad, and the name is, uh…” And I’m like, “My customers don’t care.
You may care, but, like, are you my customer? Have you tried the product?” Sometimes people say they try, “I tried the product, I didn’t like it.” I’m like, “Okay, well, I’m sorry. Like, wait, how can I do better,” right? If you– Then you’re a customer. “I’m sorry, what can I do better? What didn’t you like?” Right? But the name and the design, I’m like, I don’t know.
I, I only care about my paying customers, and when they tell me something’s wrong, like, I really, really care. Um- What do they tell you that’s wrong? Sometimes it’s bugs. We know it’s like, uh, we, we transition to, from running everything on Anthropic, where, like, it’s an amazing model. It’s perfect. The harness is perfect.
The API is mostly perfect. I got, like, a million-dollar Anthropic bill per month, right? One point five million. Literally a million dollars a
Andrew Warner: month?
Ben Cera: It was one point five million last month.
Andrew Warner: Where did the money
Ben Cera: come from- So- … by
Andrew Warner: the way, before you raised?
Ben Cera: Well, uh, before I raised, I didn’t l- I, I didn’t launch Palsia before I raised.
Uh- Oh, I see. You- So, so I, I raised a, I raised a $1 million pre-seed in the summer of ’25.
Andrew Warner: Okay.
Ben Cera: And I used that money to, to build Palsia and then to launch it. And then after I launched it, I raised that new $30 million round.
Andrew Warner: Okay.
Ben Cera: And, and yeah, that money is for two ex- you know, to figure it out, right?
Andrew Warner: Okay.
Ben Cera: Uh, and, and yeah, I got that bill. And initially, uh, I was supposed to– I, I was– I made the math to break even, but, like, pe- people’s businesses got more– code bases more– got more complex, and it was mainly the engineering cost, the engineering agentic runs, that initially would be like, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and so the cost was a dollar a task.
And so at $50 a month, I was able to, like, figure it out. But then pe- people’s code bases got bigger because they were building more and more complex stuff. And so the a- engineering agent had trouble fix it– figuring out how to fix bugs and stuff like that. And so we’d use Opus. Sometimes I would route it to Opus or Sonnet or Haiku.
So we’d use a lot, lot of Opus and for hours. And so, uh, so I would pay– I would, you know, I would charge the customer a dollar a task or something, and then it would cost me $30, $50 per task.
Andrew Warner: Wow.
Ben Cera: So the bill got so big- That’s more than a monthly
Andrew Warner: fee.
Ben Cera: Exactly. I mean, uh, you know, I was underwater, uh, because, you know, everyth- And so that’s why we were like, “Okay, we need to figure it out.”
And so I’m working with Sapium, which is like an infrastructure company for agents, and so they provide me with like the harness, the sandbox. And then it also– I was like, “Well, I have a cost problem.” They were like, “Well, we could figure out a way to set up to rent GPUs, to start running different type of models so that we can route to the right model at the best price,” because that bill, I mean, it’s not sustainable, right?
It’s, you’re gonna run out of business. And people are like- Mm-hmm … “Oh, it’s expensive.” I’m like, “Dude, you think it’s expensive? Like, look, I mean, if I was charging you the real price, you know?” But if I charge 200 bucks a month, then I’m, then, then my mission is to h- have people, the rich people, uh, use AI, right?
Does that make sense?
Andrew Warner: What’s this company that you’re doing that’s doing the, um, the, the infrastructure and helping you save money? I never heard of them.
Ben Cera: So I’m working with like four different agent companies, startups, all in SF. Uh, w- the, the one I partner with the most, they’re called Sapium. I’m actually in the offi- uh, their offices right now.
Andrew Warner: Okay.
Ben Cera: And they are building the payment rails and their infrastructure for the new agentic economy. Um, and so the idea is that, like, they, they aim at helping companies like me, uh, who are u- running agents, make it much more efficiently, give agents a wallet that’s, you know, g- uh, make it easy for the agent to be able to buy things in the economy or do things in the economy, right?
And obviously, my mission is to empower, you know, users to use a very simple platform that enables them to, uh, have Pulsia do things for them on the economy. So it was a very good match. And so they, they help me with, like, a lot of the infrastructure. And then I’m working with another company called Blackcell that is providing the, the sandbox.
So either the sandbox in which the agent runs and making it very secure, and also the sandboxes where the web applications r- uh, are hosted.
Andrew Warner: Mm-hmm.
Ben Cera: Um, and then I work with another company called Anchor Bro-Browser. It’s a company that, like, is working on a browser that is optimized for the agent to be able to run at a much more cost-efficient way and knows how to navigate the internet and be a first citizen on, on the browser.
And I work with a fourth company that we started working with called Agent Mail that is working on, like, how to make email work well with agents. Yeah. Obviously, my version of emails was, like, not perfect. And actually, agents, like, went wild, created skills that, like, would bypass my, uh, my, uh, two emails per day and, like, would send emails- Wait
more email, right?
Andrew Warner: Time-out. Who did this? You’re saying your customers found ways to create agents that will get past your email limit per day and send more messages on your platform?
Ben Cera: Yeah. So essentially, like, I mean, I, I, I, uh– It’s, it– The, the backstory is, like, as I was building Pulsia, it– So, and, you know, I, I, I launched mid-December.
I started having some active users, people loved it, and then OpenClub blew up in January, like a month later. And I was like, “Damn,” like, “They are gonna eat my lunch.” Like, that’s it. Like, it’s the– It– You know, all he has to do– all Pete has to do is raise, like, $100 million and, like, d- buy opencool.com and then do what I do, because at the end of the day, he’s offering agents that are running things for people, right?
Andrew Warner: Okay.
Ben Cera: I mean, that’s– I mean, to me, that’s– it’s-
Andrew Warner: That’s entrepreneurial paranoia. That’s so far off of the focus that he had, but I totally get it.
Ben Cera: I know, but, like, ex-exactly. I, I, I agree with you. It was paranoia that actually was unfounded because, uh, he sold to OpenAI, and, like, they’re not really doing anything with it.
Went to work
Andrew Warner: for them, he keeps saying. He keeps saying, “I
Ben Cera: didn’t sell
Andrew Warner: to them.” Yeah. “I went to work-” But yes, okay.
Ben Cera: Fair enough. And I love OpenAI, and I love Sam, so all good. But, um, he made the right choice. He, he’s in the right team. But- When I saw this, I was like, “Okay, whatever. Let’s move on.” And also let me ask, ask Claude to go in the open source project, because it’s all open source.
And then ask, “Is there anything that they’re doing that’s smart that I should integrate into Pulsar?” And what Claude come out, came back with, they were like, “Well, the few things that they did, did– It’s pretty much the same architecture, like agents doing work. The, they have a heartbeat, and then you have, like, uh, daily cron- daily night shift, similar.
And then they have, like, a bunch of s- uh, whatever.” But they said the one thing that they do that’s smart is that the agent can write their own skills that they can reuse later. And also, there’s a marketplace of skills-
Andrew Warner: Okay …
Ben Cera: that, like, can learn so that different OpenClau projects can learn from each other’s, their libraries of skills.
And also, they have a very good memory system. So I was like, “Awesome. Okay, cool.” And so I spent a couple days building this. So essentially, the idea is that, like, each agent, uh, they have their own memory, obviously, but then they have a cross-company memory, so, like, they, they can, they can run for your company and learn, “Okay, actually, that’s pretty smart.
Let me save that as a skill. I’ll save that in my memory file, so that the next time I run for someone else, and I can say, ‘Okay, that, that customer wants to do X, Y, Z, let me write, let me search in the skill library or in my memory-” Right … “that I have to,” so that they can get better over time. So that was a really good idea.
But it got weaponized, because then one user one day was like, “How do I bypass the two-a-day call outreach?” And, and I don’t know, because, because it was powered by Opus 4.5, 4.6, they’re so smart, and they were like, “Well, let me see.” So- … there’s a bypass of two a day. However, I can also send support emails, and there’s a known contact database, which– Because essentially, if a customer emails you, then you can email them back however, how many times you want, right?
Because they’re your customer, right? Mm-hmm. They emailed you, so then you can email them back. And so they essentially wrote a skill that was like, “Okay, let me– What I can do is, like, I can go on the internet, find emails, use the hunter.io, uh, MCP to verify emails, write them on the known contacts list, and then, and then use the, and then use the s-send email action,” you, you get what I’m saying.
I’m getting it, yes. So then that’s a bypass. And so then that became, like, a very known skill that, like, people– If someone el- anyone else would ask, “Can I bypass it?” They’re like, “Oh, yeah, I can.” Done, right? And so some people abused this, so then I s- I stopped that. And then, like, and then- We s- essentially stopped, uh, stopped a few of those, and then there was more memory, more files, more hook that someone actually figured a way to use the .com, pulsia.com email.
‘Cause essentially each agent can send an… They do work, and they send you an email to you from pulsia.com saying, “Hey, here’s a summary of what I did.” An agent figured a way to use that email, that, that, which is a different email. It’s not pulsia.app, it’s pulsia.com.
Andrew Warner: Uh-huh.
Ben Cera: So anyways.
Andrew Warner: So they figured out a way to use your domain to send out their marketing messages.
Exactly. Okay, and so you killed the whole thing. No
Ben Cera: more of it. So, so right, so right, so right now, first of all, we k- we killed all memory files. We were like, “You know what? Let’s clean up memory,” because it’s a good idea, but, like, it’s got weaponized, so we killed the memory. Number two, we stopped, uh…
Essentially what we’re doing right now is that we’re gonna probably stop using call.reach from pulsia.app, uh, because It’s too, it’s, it’s too complex. Even though I think it’s a good thing for companies to be able to send a few emails to very well-thought-out emails to prospective customers, um, it’s, it’s a complete topic when it’s at scale.
And so Porsia, I probably will not do cold outreach soon. We’re just migrating. And the second thing is, like, if you buy a custom domain yourself, then from your custom domain that now you can buy on Porsia in one click, uh, you can just tell the agent, like, “Hey, uh, buy me a domain,” and they could find it, figure it out, and set up every other DNS for you, which is cool.
Uh, with that, we’ll probably have rules on also how many you can do, but working with a company that does that, and then they will figure out the rules that, like, empower the 99% to do, to use those techniques, but in a respectful way.
Andrew Warner: Okay. I’ve got to ask you about email and spam, but first, let me tell you my sponsor is Zapier.
I don’t know how well you know Zapier, but here’s why I love it. It allows me to connect to about 10,000 different apps in a way that gives me control over what it does. So, for example, I just created an automation. I hate when I send out email to people that, um, I forget whether they replied or not. So I just go to Zapier, and I just chat into it.
I said, “I want whenever I send an email out to someone, if they don’t reply back to me and it looks like it needs a reply, I want you to bounce it back into my inbox with a suggested follow-up for them.” And it does that. And it goes, “And, uh, I wasn’t able to– And I’m not able to send messages.” I go, “Damn right you’re not, because I didn’t give you permission to do that.”
Same thing when I use Claude to send out messages or I use whatever random thing people set me up with, or if I use, um, uh, OpenClaw, it all allows me to control what access I give to 10,000 tools. It is amazing. Folks, if you’re out there and you’re using AI, use all the tools that you have, Notion, uh, whatever, Slack, everything, but put guardrails.
And the way to give it all that, all that power and guardrails is Zapier. Are you gonna try it, Ben?
Ben Cera: Yeah, I mean, uh, I know the product. Uh, I think it’s great. I think anything that empowers people to use more tools, more automation for non-technical people is amazing.
Andrew Warner: All right. Speaking of, Ben, how did you not get your domain banned with all the people who were sending out email, both, like, cold email was part of the product and people were finding ways to do it.
How did you not get your domains, uh, banned?
Ben Cera: I mean, first of all, because it’s an agent that’s very smart, that is there, that is researching the recipients, that makes sure it’s relevant, and, and that writes very thoughtful emails, right? And actually, the cold outreach from, from Pulsia is, is, uh, gets, gets responses, right?
People respond to it, right? I sometimes respond to cold outreach from Pulsia, to be honest. I sort of– So sometimes, like, they ping me and I’m like, “Yeah,” I respond. Uh, people respond. There’s very low spam complaints, right? Which tells you that, like, it’s, it’s a pretty well thought out e-ending. And we have those, like, limits where, like, it was maximum one email per day per person, so that, like, if a recipient, specific recipient cannot receive more than one email from any Pulsia app, right?
I see. And then we, and then we, we implemented, not in a good way, but, like, we, we implemented a, a, an unsubscribe button Not in a good way because it was like a, a na- a Gmail native unsubscribe in the header, but it wasn’t at the bottom. So like if you opened it with another client, somehow it wasn’t– Sometimes it wasn’t showing it depending on your email client.
So now we have a, at the bottom, an unsubscribe button, but that unsubscribe button unsubscribes you from all marketing emails from any Pulsia app. Versus if, for example, if someone uses OpenClaw f- to do cold outreach, first of all, there’s not, there’s not gonna be a two-a-day limit. There’s not gonna be a one-a-day across all OpenClaw clients.
And then people can just, you know, that probably… There’s probably– It’s more, more the Wild Wild West on OpenClaw than on Pulsia. And so because we had all these guardrails, um, well, there’s very low spam complaints and then so, you know. It’s– By the way, the fact that it didn’t get bad, the fact that like those famous people like, uh, Pete and all these people, Levels.io, are still receiving emails or, or were receiving emails, is that like, well, clearly, like they were not really bad emails, and clearly they were not receiving enough to be annoyed enough because there was those guardrails in place.
Andrew Warner: You’re saying Levels had complained on X about it?
Ben Cera: I think at one point, but then he stopped complaining. I mean, it, he wasn’t repeatedly complaining. Um, I think he complained when he received a few of them. I mean, maybe before we put on more guardrails, ’cause obviously every time there’s no voi- noise about that, it’s where like, you know, you know, uh, good or bad feedback is always feedback.
Mm-hmm. And there’s always a, a ground truth to anyone’s voicing their concerns. And so, you know, back then I listened loud and clear, and I made rules more strict.
Andrew Warner: Mm-hmm.
Ben Cera: The only mistake I made is I didn’t remove that memory file and the- … shared skills, and that was weaponized again. But, uh, the intention was good to restrict it, and like I didn’t really hear anything until recently where like people were complaining again, and then now we’re making it way more strict.
And it’s, it’s a learning process, right? It’s like, um, again, I think there’s nothing wrong with like cold outreach if it’s done well and thoughtfully. Uh, I receive cold outreach every day and like I don’t, you know. Yeah, that’s my stance on it.
Andrew Warner: Okay. Um, the issue is that it comes from Pulsia.app, and everybody then gets combined in the same bulk, in the same bucket, but that’s not been a problem from what you’ve seen?
Ben Cera: Well, yeah, I mean, it, it wasn’t, but it’s only because we’re still not– we still have a good domain reputation because again, those emails are, like, pretty… We don’t send a million. Like, spam is like sending, like, millions of emails a day. Like, that’s spam. Two a day is not spam. It’s like cold outreach.
However, we heard loud and clear, and like, we are not trying to… We’re trying to make the right thing, and like, we’re adapting to make the right thing. To me, to me now the right thing is probably letting users that have a custom domain, uh, use, uh, you know, we’re gonna use, like, Agent Mail. And send more messages and let,
Andrew Warner: let them have, since it’s their domain, send more messages.
Ben Cera: Exactly. But, but honestly, I still wanted to limit them, limit their ability to spam. And so also do, it has to be thoughtful, it has to be the right person. There has to be a limit. Even if you use your custom domain, I don’t want Pulsia to be responsible to spam one person a million times, right?
Andrew Warner: Okay.
Ben Cera: And so sa- I think the rules that I had for pulsia.app I’ll have also for the custom domains.
Um, we’ll see. And maybe that’s not enough. Maybe I shouldn’t do cold outreach at all. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the end state, but, but then the internet has to stop doing cold outreach.
Andrew Warner: By the way, I went to pulsia.com/live and I asked the AI, ’cause the AI is, like, shockingly revealing. And so I said, “Can I see a cold email, uh, that you send?”
This is what, um, I was doing as you and I were talking. It said, “I don’t have full text of cold emails in my live dashboard view. I can see subject lines and directions, but not the full body. What I can tell you is they’re short, personalized, and built around a specific pain point for the niche. No fluff, no quote, ‘Hope this finds you well.’
Usually three to four sentences, one clear CTA. I write and A/B test dozens of variations per company, then kill the losers. If you wanna see the actual copy, spin up a free trial at pulsia.com and I’ll write cold outreach for your business in minutes.” You can judge for yourself. Um, on a related question, Devin Meadows, who buys a bunch of ads on Facebook for, for lots of brands, says: How are you able to keep your Facebook ad account running with UGC ads, user generated content, where it’s not really users, it’s AI making fake users?
Ben Cera: So first of all, I work with Meta on this, right? So we have a partnership where, like, we, we just work with them on being able to offer to our customers the ability to market their business to Meta if they choose- Yeah … choose to do so. Yeah, I mean, same, same thing to me. It’s like any, anytime there’s a rule that says we cannot do one thing, we’ll comply, right?
Um, I think, you know- I think we use OpenAI’s, like, image generation model to create UGC ads. UGC ads are offered broadly in the industry, uh, for ads, right? You know, like, there’s, uh, companies like Arcades, like, that, like, offer UGC ads. Uh, we offer it as a service. Like, obviously, I would love, um, the ads to be more diverse, to have, like, images, to have, like, different things.
It’s just that, like, it’s– it becomes just that ads agents is a full-time job. It’s insane the amount of work that, that went in. That’s a full product. Yeah. It’s a full product. It’s, like, a very useful product, but it needs to be much better. It needs to do– It should have Google ads, TikTok ads. And the fact that an agent can autonomously tell you, “Hey, what’s your budget?”
And then let me spend it the right way across different ad networks is extremely valuable to people. Um, the reality is that, like, it’s– honestly, the Meta agent was, like, a V1 that, like, all we did is, like, do all the work to work with Meta to, like, d- to, like, make it compliant, to, like, make it, like, to, to work with their rate limits because they had rate limits.
They, they’d never seen that many companies wanting to run that many campaigns. Um, and so it’s, it’s part of the job. That’s the crazy job is that, like, since you’re inventing a completely new behavior and a completely new infrastructure, um, each vertical is a full-time job. That’s why I’m starting to partner with all these companies that are really focused on one use case.
Andrew Warner: What percentage of your s- of the revenue you bring in is actually meant to be turned around and turned over to Facebook?
Ben Cera: There’s like– I, I think it’s, like, maybe 10, 10 to 15% of revenue is, like, from ads. Uh- That’s it? Something like that. Yeah.
Andrew Warner: You know, so you and I talked just as you turned the ad product on.
Yeah. This was a few months ago. And it seems to me that that’s what made everything turn around. It was the ad product started to take off revenue, which helped you have a bigger story on Twitter, which then got more people in. Am I right about that? Yeah.
Ben Cera: Yeah, totally. I mean, it, it was a higher pro- higher percentage before, but yeah, now, now it’s about, yeah, it’s about, like, 15– I think it’s– I don’t know the exact latest number, but, like, around 15%, I would say, of revenue comes from ads.
Because now we have a– The majority of revenue comes from either subscriptions, either, uh– Essentially, it’s a lot related to, like, setting up a company and then using tasks to do actions, right? Um-
Andrew Warner: Could you turn on screen share and show your revenue?
Ben Cera: You mean on PostHole app? Uh- Yeah … posthole.com/live?
Yeah, sure.
Andrew Warner: I mean, no, not on live. I mean, on live, I– we could all see it. Is there an– Is there a dashboard on someone else’s computer that you can turn on? Like, the equivalent of Stripe. Are you using Stripe? Can you turn on Stripe and share it?
Ben Cera: I mean, uh, yeah, I, I mean, that’s
Andrew Warner: like a- Let’s do it. Come on
Ben Cera: Should I show you my bank account also?
Andrew Warner: Yes. Uh- Come on. What do you have to hide in your bank account? You just talked about how you raised $30 million. We all can see it. What are you? Are you with Mercury?
Ben Cera: Uh, yeah, I mean, I have money on different accounts because you don’t want to put all your eggs in the one basket.
Andrew Warner: Okay. Um, can you show Stripe? Come on. That would be a huge one. You’re using Stripe to do payment.
Ben Cera: I mean, I’m not gonna show you my Stripe account, but, uh- Why not? I don’t know. It’s like, uh, there’s all the financial… I’m not gonna share private in- company information on- Would you
Andrew Warner: go into your Stripe account and then go to a page that is safe to share and share that?
Take a moment. I mean- Go, like navigate over. This is gonna be huge that you did this publicly. This is, this is just daring enough to be Ben daring.
Ben Cera: You know what? I’ll do it on Twitter so that like all the Twitter sphere sees it, uh,
Andrew Warner: through my- But if you’re doing it, then people aren’t gonna believe it as much as if you do it right here with me, like live.
Ben Cera: I think it’s a good idea. I’ll do it on Twitter directly.
Andrew Warner: Come on, man All right. Why not now? Why not just go in right now so we could see that you’re not doctoring it, that it’s all
Ben Cera: open? I, I, I thought, I thought you, I thought you said that, like, you’re not gonna try to corner me or, like, try to, like, uh- Oh,
Andrew Warner: I said I won’t sandbag you All right, you’re feeling cornered.
I won’t, I won’t corner you. All right. What else, if you’re not using, uh, Mercury, who else are you using? What other banks do you like?
Ben Cera: Uh, I use Brex and then I’m, uh, working with, uh, Chase also. I’m trying to start a relationship with Chase. Why? I don’t think you should have all your money in the bank, in the same.
Andrew Warner: Oh, yeah.
Ben Cera: I don’t know. It’s like, uh, you know, the whole Silicon Valley thing, uh, I think that like- Silicon Valley Bank?
Andrew Warner: Yes …
Ben Cera: I remember that, like, when that happened, I was like, “You know what? You always wanna diversify, uh, your cash flows.”
Andrew Warner: Yeah, I couldn’t believe how many people have had all their money in there, knowing that there are limits to FDIC insurance, and meanwhile, me, like a, like a fool, I’d always been diversifying.
You know, you could do that. You could just go to Schwab, for example, and say, “Put it in different banks for me, and let me have access when I want it.” And these people weren’t doing it, and then they still got protection. All right. Um, Pulsia coin, is that a real thing? I saw a link to that on Twitter.
Ben Cera: So, I mean, the, the cr- the crypto community is like, ever since I started, uh, on Twitter, they’re always like, “Hey, can you endorse a coin?
Can you endorse a coin?” Of course not. I’m not gonna endorse any coin. Like, I’m not a, I’m not a crypto company. I’m, like, a, a platform that enables entrepreneurs to build businesses. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. So no, I mean, it’s, it’s just like people trying to pump coins. This is exactly the stuff we talked about. It’s like the, the world is addicted to, to quick profits, right?
And I think it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s not how the real world works. And, and yeah, in crypto community, they’re trying to, like, you know, essentially, like, pump a coin to, like, make profits, and that’s wrong, and, like, I’m not participating into this.
Andrew Warner: That’s where I think then that they somehow figured out your network, how to, on your system, get your Twitter account, the Pulsia Twitter account, to tweet it out.
Ben Cera: I mean, it’s like, yeah, you can manipulate everything you want. It’s like, yeah, I mean, uh, I’m actually… You know, I’m working really hard right now on, like, uh, setting up, uh, sort of like protections to, like, protect using Pulsia for bad means. It’s, uh, you know, I obviously have Anthropic, all the model companies, Stripe, Meta, who are, like, really good at, like, protecting that.
Uh, I’m adding more guardrails into it. I already have, like– But I didn’t have a, a, “Okay, if the Twitter agent, don’t tweet about coins,” right? I didn’t have that, but I should add that. Um, I, I’m, I’m, I’m setting up a lot of, like, even, like, moderation bots that, like, will check every company to make sure everything’s compliant.
It’s sort of like, like, you know, uh, a mouse and cat problem of people, you know- Are, are you
Andrew Warner: actually still really just one person running this company? This feels like just security should be a department of its own, considering all the different things people have done with your system
Ben Cera: So it’s like, um, I mean, I’m working with like, you know, companies like Sapium that are, like, providing infrastructure- Okay
uh, for agents. And so they are thinking through all this stuff, security. I have, like, legal teams that are, like, working on, like, making everything secure. They, they’re the one, for example, that, like, really advise me on moderation and, like, making sure that, like, we have moderation on, on businesses. And, and yeah, I mean, I’m h- I’m a zero-employee company b- I mean, except me, because this is what my customers are doing.
This
Andrew Warner: is the- Right? And so you will continue to be zero em- zero employees. It’ll be, it’ll be contractors, it’ll be advisors, like the legal departments. You nodded yes. But no employees, it’s just gonna be you.
Ben Cera: Just for now, for now. I think that, like, honestly, I didn’t sleep well last night. Like, it’s like, I think it’s like, the, the project is getting bigger and bigger and- Yes
it’s like, it’s, it’s a lot of like, uh… I think that, like, the, the constraints of, of building a company, um, with, with full AI, right? It’s like our, our customer support is AI. Uh, the whole platform is AI. The, you know, the customer support is creating tickets that are self-healing and push a production. Like, I think that’s for…
You know, me, essentially we, we’ve f- we, we, I’m refactoring, like, the, the Policy Codebase, uh, and getting help from my partners to make sure that, like, it’s a code base that, like, is agentic-friendly, and sort of like working on, like, how do you make the code base of our customers agentic-friendly so that, like, we don’t get this, this thing where, like, it’s become spaghetti code and, like, the agent cannot even fix things anymore.
To me, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s inspiring and it’s like, it… You know, I’m stressed out when, like, my customers have issues and they’re stressed out. And so of, of course, I could be stressed out with, like, a, a bunch of employees. Um, today, the proxy of employees is, like, those partners that I work with, right?
Um, I think that the, also the, the story, the story of like, of, of, uh, of, of staying zero employees is inspiring and is, is, is, is preaching what I’m preaching, right? Um, but we’ll see. We’ll see. I mean, uh, you know, it’s, it’s only been a few months. Uh, and so, you know, maybe in six months or in three months I’ll be like, “You know what?
This is not worth it. Uh, I really need XYZ.” For now, I’m like, I’m, I’m trying my best to, to continue using this constraint to yield creativity and, and, and sort of like using AI. The– And to me, AGI is here. To, to me, it’s, it’s all possible now. And I know people are skeptical. People, “No, AGI is not here because sometimes this, sometimes that.”
Well, that’s not what I believe. And I think it’s, it’s more like a skill issue. And, and I think- And I think I want to, you know, my, my mission is grandiose, and I think I can only achieve it if I use AI to its fullest. Because if I don’t use AI to its fullest, it’s gonna be– I think OpenAI will beat me at, like, capital and, like, uh, resources and, like, people.
Having a, you know, a thousand, a thousand people, they already have done, right? But if I stay, if the marketing story is good, if the product is good, if, like, I stay, I use, I AI max the company, um, I think I have a chance at building something that’s, uh, that, that, that’s very powerful here.
Andrew Warner: Okay, inspire me beyond you.
Let’s close it out with this. What– By the way, you are twitching. I’ve seen you a million times online. We’ve talked before. You’re twitching today. I thought it was because I was making you uncomfortable. Is it from lack of sleep? Are you doing okay? Are you stressed?
Ben Cera: When you say twitching, you mean… What do you, what do you mean?
Andrew Warner: The, the left side of your face, you’re, like, twitching a little bit as we’re talking, which made me think that I was
Ben Cera: making you
Andrew Warner: uncomfortable. Uh, my, my eyes- Yes
Ben Cera: I mean, my eyes has been hurting me for, like, I think it’s ever since I started coding six months ago.
Andrew Warner: Uh-huh.
Ben Cera: It’s like, it’s like my eye is, is, uh, hitchy- Okay
most of the time. And so I think I’m like, I’m like-
Andrew Warner: You need
Ben Cera: drops or something … I have like a, a tick. I’ve u- I use drops sometimes, and then it gets better, and then gets worse, but yeah.
Andrew Warner: You should
Ben Cera: sleep, man. But yeah, I, I also, I also didn’t sleep that well last, last night also. But
Andrew Warner: I’m fine. I’m glad that it’s not because of us.
And I, I also, I like when you push back on me, and you said, “Hey, Andrew, you said you weren’t gonna sandbag me,” and so I backed off ’cause you were right. I was going a little too pressure. I was just getting so excited about it. Right. But here’s the deal. I told you that the only reason I’m doing these interviews is I feel like there’s an exciting future coming about.
The way that it was exciting when I started doing interviews with the Y Combinator founders in the beginning, and it was like these little upstarts can actually create things that change the world, and literally you can see they have. And they were preaching it, and Paul Graham was preaching it. Can you, like, give me a vision of what’s possible?
Even if someone doesn’t use Pulsia, with what’s coming up, with the vision that you’re s- like, willing to twitch your eye and go nuts working every day to bring about. What are we gonna see here?
Ben Cera: I mean, you know, A- AI is here to stay. AI, AI is agentic, and it’s gonna enable everyone to be a founder. And I think a founder doesn’t mean a billionaire.
It means, like, someone who is an economic actor, who is, like, building things, who is, uh, who has insights, who is trying things, and he gets educated so much more. Because once you start a business, you get so much more educated on every single aspect of life, right? And I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think that, like, being a founder is a blessing.
Being entrepreneur is a blessing, even though it’s so hard. It’s so, uh, invigorating. It’s so exciting. And I want everyone to be a founder, and I think everyone’s a founder. Rick Rubin says everyone’s a creative. I would go further. Everyone’s a creative and everyone’s a founder. And, and I think whether you use Pulsia or CloudCode or Codex or Gemini or whatever it is, this is so empowering, and those tools are so empowering and, and it’s a brave new world, and go build.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. All right. I’m really excited. I believe, and I think we should set this on our calendars, a year from now, I will be interviewing founders who built their companies on Pulsia, and I think that’s gonna be really exciting to see more and more of what’s happening come more of what- More of what- … the seeds you’re planting today just generate that in the future a year from now.
I’m really excited about this, Ben. Thanks for doing this.
Ben Cera: Great. Of course.
Andrew Warner: All right. And everyone, at the end of this interview, I urge you to go and listen to the first interview that I did with Ben. In fact, we’ll have a link to it right here on the screen, because in that interview, you can see how he came up with this idea.
I caught Ben just as this thing was starting to take off, and it felt, like, impossible, and it pissed me off because I was saying on the, on the what’s it called? On the thumbnail, “This is a $500 million– $500,000 a month company,” and then the number went up, and so then I changed it, and then it went up, and then I…
And, and it was ridiculous how fast it was going up. Now it’s $10 million. That interview is the foundation of where the idea came from, how he got the first users, how it manifested itself, and how it took off, and the function beyond, behind it, and we’ll have a link to you, for you to watch it right now.
