Strengthening Relationships with AI Social Operating System ft. Haz Hubble (Pally)

Eric (00:02.135)
to innovators can laugh. How you do today?

Haz Hubble (00:04.374)
Very good, thanks, Eric. How are you?

Eric (00:06.382)
I'm pretty good. Let me give you a little background to the audience. They can get a better understanding of who you are. How's hubble? Well, at 14, this guy was selling real estate. He was running a company and at the age of 20, he was the youngest C G M A, which is like this charter global accountant. Very impressive. And at 22, he was the CFO of a 200% company. Now he's created Pali, which is the world's first social iOS.

Pali connect social messaging planning and relationship management to help you build stronger relationships and All supercharged by AI has super excited to have you here Yeah, you're like a jack-of-all-trades let's get started with fill in the blank here Fill in the blank. I grew up in blank and my favorite thing about that city is blank

Haz Hubble (01:00.007)
Bexhill on sea and the sea. Growing up on the seaside was really nice.

Eric (01:06.346)
Okay, when I was a kid, I wanted to be blank.

Haz Hubble (01:11.585)
A footballer of course, but also an architect.

Eric (01:15.574)
Okay, the craziest thing I ever did to make or save money was blank.

Haz Hubble (01:24.062)
I shoveled snow like when I was about 12 years old but the problem was is I had a hole in my pocket which I didn't realise so I was like 12 years old shoveling all this snow for all of my neighbours getting like I don't know 2-3 pounds a go or something storing all of this money and then at the end of this like literally like 4-5 hours I realised that all of this money had fallen out of my pocket in this hole in the snow somewhere as I've been walking around.

So I made a grand total of zero pounds after all of this work. So that's probably the funniest.

Eric (01:59.118)
Hey, at least you burned some calories, right? Okay. All right, best advice my mom or dad ever gave me or a mentor, it was blank.

Haz Hubble (02:01.026)
Yeah, exactly.

Haz Hubble (02:10.078)
Let's go for my mum. It's not explicit advice as such, but the biggest thing that she embarked upon me was always about integrity. It really didn't, I mean obviously she didn't want me to do things that were bad, but it would always be far worse if I then lied about them. And so this value of integrity and always being honest, honesty above all else, is something that I probably took away from my mum the most.

Eric (02:38.278)
Okay, okay. And last fill in the blank a question here blank is a food that my mom likes, but I hate

Haz Hubble (02:46.382)
There's nothing. I love all food. I'm such a foodie. I'm way less fussy than my mum, so there's zero foods that she likes that I don't like.

Eric (02:59.958)
Okay. All right. Uh, so listen, I think we're going to have an interesting discussion here because I read this study a while back. Maybe you've heard of it. I think they interviewed, uh, I don't know, a few hundred people from this Harvard class dozens of years ago. And at the end of the day, when they, when they asked the people, like what made them truly happy. And these are people from all walks of life, doctors, lawyers, scientists. I think there was even a president or politicians in there. When it came down to it.

was the thing that, that really, you know, the happiest, the happiest people came down to really good quality. Friendships and relationships and that, that really stuck with me because I'm a true believer of like real wealth. Wealth is not necessarily, you know, how much is, is your net worth by, you know, in your bank account or by your assets, but by the number of people that you have these really genuine, you know, quality relationships with.

And, um, what your platform is aiming to do, at least in my perspective is not just connect people like previous platforms have done, but to help build, you know, good friendships. So I wanted you to tell us how you came up with the idea and then also what stage are you in, in terms of the planning and then also what are like the big benefits, uh, for, you know, people who are going to use the platform.

Haz Hubble (04:25.098)
Sure, so the study, yeah, the Harvard study of adult development, the longest scientific study of all time. And as you said, the biggest thing coming out of that is that more than anything else, your relationships have the biggest impact on your quality of life and also your longevity. So how long you live. It's amazing that you can smoke 15 cigarettes per day, you can be an alcoholic and you still live longer.

than if you had no strong relationships. So it's better for you, or rather on the flip side, loneliness is worse for you than literally smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. And so it's crazy how much of an impact this has. I don't think it's really a surprise to anybody when you really think about it, but it's something that often goes unsaid. And so I guess I'm out here saying it and sort of reminding people about the value of relationships, and that is why I'm building Pali. So...

With Polly or with Billy?

Eric (05:22.158)
Well, the loneliness thing, if you don't mind me saying, that is a big factor. Both my dad and my father-in-law are 67 years old. They're still working. And the only reason they don't want to quit is because once they quit, they don't have any sense of purpose. They don't know what they're going to do other than maybe sit on the couch and watch TV and nag their wives like, hey, when is dinner ready? So that is a huge, huge factor that impacts so many different people.

And even, even my generation where I'm not close to retirement yet, but it's something I think about, like, what is my retirement going to look like? I don't want to be in my dad's position.

Haz Hubble (05:58.966)
Yeah, 100%. And it's something I've seen in my family. And I think one of the main reasons that I was cognizant of this being such a big deal is seeing that in my grandparents, in my mom, in my, you know, in my family, seeing the value of relationships, but also the dangers of not having relationships at the same time. And so, and in my own life, you know, like in my own life, where there's been moments that I've had to go against the tide and do something that no one else was doing and, you know, moving across the country as a 17 year old.

you know, and then to a place where I knew zero people, moving them to different countries again and again and again, doing the same thing. I realized how tough it is when you don't have those strong relationships and you have to build them. But what I also realized is just how hard it is to maintain. You know, it is one thing meeting people, but then once you know them, it's so hard to stay in touch with people. And social media is designed or supposedly branded as this thing that's meant to be social. And...

Maybe once upon a time it was, but now it's simply not. It's this algorithmic feed of generally people you don't know. It's they're optimizing for your attention. They're optimizing for advertising dollars. They're not optimizing for connection or for building strong relationships. And so realizing just how bad the tools were out there to help you build stronger relationships. That's what led me to building Pali, which is designed to build those tools to help you have stronger relationships.

Eric (07:27.254)
Now the maintaining part that really interests me because that's where a lot of people drop the ball because it takes work and, and honestly, it can take something, maybe 30 minutes every couple of weeks, usually I will copy and paste maybe the same message, text it or email it to a few friends. Of course I, you know, I changed the name or whatever, but it's just sort of like, Hey, how's it going? Have you been, you know, I've been doing this lately, just was thinking about you, you know, some type of message, but a lot of people don't do that.

And months go by that friendship or that relationship, it deteriorates. And then all of a sudden it's non-existent anymore. So does your platform, are you building something in there that helps the maintaining aspect of relationships?

Haz Hubble (08:09.086)
Exactly. So high level, how Pali works is it sits above all of your other platforms. So the first step is to bring all of your relationships together. We use AI to basically go from your phone book, so your address, you know, address book on your phone, find all of their social platforms, and then basically start aggregating those relationships into one place, first of all. But then our AI keeps track for you.

So if something important happens in someone's life, whether it's on Instagram or it's on LinkedIn or it's on Twitter or it's on their website or anything, our AI notices, it realizes it's relevant and important in a key life moment, and it tells you about it. Eric, your friend Jack just got engaged. Maybe you want to say congratulations. And it's these posts that you could probably quite easily miss. I think about it in terms of like, let's say the different circles that you live in. Of course you have your close friends. Generally speaking,

this isn't going to help you with those because you're already in touch with them on a regular basis every day, every couple of days, every week, whatever. But there's also hundreds of people that you care about, that you want to maintain those relationships with, but it's really, really hard to keep up because there's so much noise on social media. You can't spend hours a day scrolling. So you're going to miss things inevitably. And it sounds like you're the type of person that puts the effort in to keep track of people when you last spoke to them.

That's one part that Pali does automatically for you is when did you last speak and reminding you to reach out at a set cadence. Maybe it's every month, maybe six months, maybe a year, depending on different circles that you, you know, you're, that you define. Um, but the other thing is like, when are the key life moments and helping you not miss those key life moments. So that's sort of how Pali sits above. It keeps track for you and it helps you know when to reach out at the right time.

Eric (09:57.998)
The set cadence part, the following up part, that's something that you can set up in the application.

Haz Hubble (10:03.89)
Exactly, and it's by you do it by what we call circle so you can define these are my best friends This is my family these are founders that I'm friends with these are I don't know ex colleagues These are my advisors or mentors and for each one of them you can say okay Well my family I want to speak to every two weeks my best friends make sure I'm speaking to every two weeks my ex Colleagues, maybe once a year

You know, and you can set that up and then you just forget about it and it will come back into your, let's say, schedule at the right time for when you need to reach out. But we try and keep it very biased. So we give you up to five things to do per day and it's just five insights. So it could be this person got engaged, you haven't spoken to this person in a while, this person you met last week, maybe you want to follow up and then this person's raised money and this person's got a new job. Like it's just five people that you could reach out to per day.

Eric (10:37.84)
All right.

Eric (10:57.174)
Love it, love it. And so it sits on your phone book, but you also said that it can access your other social applications. So like the typical person, is it going to access their Twitter account or LinkedIn account and then maybe something else?

Haz Hubble (11:09.854)
and Instagram and also your calendar and email.

Eric (11:14.15)
Alright, alright. Now how's it going? Because I think this was in beta phase the last time I learned about it. Where are we now?

Haz Hubble (11:21.506)
Still in beta, but very close now to coming out of beta. So I think we'll be doing a public launch in January, so next month basically.

Eric (11:30.686)
All right, all right, and what do people get excited about the most, the ones who are in the Beta program?

Haz Hubble (11:35.102)
It's 100% the information that we can give. So the concept of a personal CRM isn't necessarily new. This concept of even the cadence, you know, isn't necessarily new. What is fundamentally new is the depth of understanding that our AI has about each person. So our AI isn't just looking at like, oh, they changed their bio from X to Y. They updated their LinkedIn headline from, you know, X to Y.

It's looking at the content of every post. So they actually wrote a whole, you know, one page post on LinkedIn. They uploaded a photo of them in London. It understands that this photo is in London. You know, they've got engaged on Instagram has looked at that photo and it's understood that this is an engagement photo. So it's going way deeper into the content itself to really understand who, what's happening in these people's lives. So it can give you insights that.

no other platform in the world can give you. And that's our unique technology, our unique AI that we've built. And that's what's super powerful for all of those reasons that I mentioned.

Eric (12:45.622)
Okay, I love this. Is there any sort of like event aspect and part of the tool, like any events or in-person meetups or anything?

Haz Hubble (12:51.958)
Yeah. So we take a come for the tool, stay for the network approach. This is a common marketing strategy and social, to be honest with you. Instagram, for example, started as a, you know, a photo editing app that then became a social, social network. We never planned to become what we call a social media. So I define that as like something that someone will sit and scroll through, but we're building not just this relationship intelligence, but a whole suite of tools to help you be a better friend and maintain that.

that social life. So the relationship intelligence is the first tool that is the most valuable piece of our stack, let's say. But then the next thing to do once you have that insight, it's to reach out. And so we also have messaging. So ultimately, you know, we hope to replace WhatsApp with our messaging. When you're in messaging, you're trying to say, let's go get dinner. So we've got an AI concierge that can tell you where to go, and it can make the dinner reservation for you. So then you go to the dinner reservation, but now you want to make sure that it's in your calendar, well, it will automatically add it to your

as well. So we're thinking about our entire journey of the social relationship and making sure that we have the tools to support the entire journey. And one part of that is your plans, it's events, if you want to host a party, you can host a party. So it's really a fully fledged, as I said, a social operating system that helps you across that end to end journey.

Eric (14:13.67)
This sounds so fascinating. What does the business model look like for you? Because right now, I don't pay to use LinkedIn. I mean, I guess you can get LinkedIn Premium, but that's more if you're trying to connect with people in a sales type and way or whatever. But for your platform, have you, what are you guys thinking right now?

Haz Hubble (14:30.21)
So it's completely free and you can always use it completely free. It will always be free for like 90% of the features. Um, the insights over time will probably segment into free insights and then paid insights. The difference being the free ones would be more personal that like every lay person would want to have birthdays, you know, engagement, perhaps people visiting your city, but then people will pay for the more professional insights. The

someone raise money or someone's company is growing really, really fast. So we see relationships as relationships. We don't want to define whether we're like personal or professional. We kind of want to sit in the middle of both. However, our business model will be more focused on the professional users who want to spend it's not very much 15 to $20 a month, but to get those insights across their entire network would be really powerful. So that's one part of it. The second part is that AI concierge I mentioned. So if we win insights.

you know, that relationship intelligence piece, I think that we can win messaging, which will then basically move that daily interaction away from WhatsApp into Pali. And then by that, people will be making plans within Pali, having that AI concierge give them recommendations, and then our partners pay us. So those partners are people like OpenTable. So when that reservation is happening in the background, we're getting paid. When you book a ticket to go see some jazz music from, let's say, Ticketmaster, we're getting paid.

So it doesn't cost the user anything, it's still completely free, but we make money from basically the traffic that we're sending to these events or experiences throughout that.

Eric (16:06.35)
Yeah. And in terms of like a flywheel or any growth strategies, what are you guys doing right now that seems to be working and getting people to sign up on the waiting list?

Haz Hubble (16:14.57)
Yes, well, I mean, so we're focused more on the actual product itself. So there's two, um, sort of routes that we're taking in terms of that. One is the product like growth side and building viral loops into the product. So this is, for example, when you have an insight and you want to message someone. Uh, of course, if they're in Pali, that conversation happens within Pali. Amazing. We're happy about that. But if they're not in Pali, it automatically creates the SMS for you to send to the person and that SMS is ends with sent with Pali.

So it has this viral loop in every action that's basically taken within the platform that then drives people back to like, oh, what is Pali? Let me find out what Pali is. And so that sort of has that internal viral loop. And then the other side is the events piece. So this is good because it brings a lot of people through the platform at once. If you get someone who hosts a big event, a thousand people, and they use Pali to host the event, then that's a thousand people coming into the platform in one go.

So this is a really high leverage strategy that we're doing. It's kind of like influencer marketing in some respects, but more around a physical event rather than just like an influencer posting something online.

Eric (17:25.002)
Awesome, Haas. Okay. Now you're an accountant by trade CFO Are you also like a developer an engineer? What does your team structure look like right now?

Haz Hubble (17:34.73)
Mate, I'm everything. I'm going to talk about my first business was design. So it was graphic design, web development, social media management. So there was a bit of coding in there, a bit of design, a bit of marketing. Then I went the finance route and did a ton of operational stuff. So my role at Pali is very much like sales and fundraising, of course, marketing, design, products, basically everything.

I do some of the building, but I have an amazing team of engineers. So my CTO is a guy called Alan Min. Um, he's very experienced on the backend. And then we have, um, John, who's our head of mobile, who basically does all the front end on the app side of things. So it's really the three of us, two engineers and myself. I do all of the other things and then, uh, these guys do purely engineering.

Eric (18:23.738)
You're kidding. That seems like, I was thinking you had at least a dozen people on the team.

Haz Hubble (18:29.822)
Yeah, I mean, both of these engineers are 10x engineers. I do not know how they ship the amount of stuff that they ship at such high quality. I'm incredibly lucky to have them. So yeah, I mean, it works well. I think honestly, like we're just closing our funding round now and we're excited to add to the team and be able to move even faster, but it's been going really, really well.

Eric (18:53.919)
How did you find them, Haus?

Haz Hubble (18:56.062)
a mix actually like so we actually pivoted into this in February together, but we I started the Pali just over two years ago and that first year was under a different business idea. But actually that first year, the best thing that came out of it other than me learning tons of things and making so many mistakes was finding this team. And it was tough. It was super tough because I was new to tech. I didn't have any tech really contacts or experience. I knew I had no idea really how to deal with.

finding good engineers or what did that even look like? So I made mistakes. I hired the wrong people. There were people I hired and lasted a week because I was sold on them, but they couldn't actually build. Luckily we realized quickly enough. So honestly, the short answer is luck. At the end of the day, I just kept looking, kept looking, kept looking and eventually managed to find these people. And...

So basically one came from LinkedIn and the other came from a recommendation from a friend. Um, yeah. And then we started working together and ended up, well, now we've been working together for over a year and it's going really well.

Eric (20:04.582)
Okay, have there been any other helpful resources like, I don't know, programs, accelerators, anything like that that's been influential?

Haz Hubble (20:14.062)
Honestly, well, so the most influential thing was joining Sigma Squared, actually. So Sigma Squared is the community of young founders under 26, the most ambitious, the generally the most accomplished founders under 26. So I'm very lucky to be a part of that. And the help and energy and introductions and access that being in this community has unlocked has been...

invaluable. I couldn't describe how valuable it's been. I mean, I've raised money off of the back of that, like significant amounts of money off the back of being sigma squared from the best investors in the world that would not have happened without sigma squared. So that I think, there's nothing comes close to how valuable that's been for me.

Eric (21:00.09)
Okay, well, I'm quite fascinated about this. I've already signed up for the waiting list, so I'm eager to get access and start using it. I think it's great, especially for people like me who have moved to another country and they just don't have many friends. So I'm eager to try it out. Now we've come to the final part, rapid fire questions. Give me the first thing that pops into your head. Are you ready, Hawes?

Haz Hubble (21:08.62)
after.

Haz Hubble (21:23.01)
Let's go.

Eric (21:24.714)
Okay, the Academy Award for Blank goes to Haas.

Haz Hubble (21:31.685)
Um...

Haz Hubble (21:37.038)
I don't know, I don't know. I know this is really slow and I need to be fast. Okay, let's say positivity. I try to always be the most positive person.

Eric (21:50.722)
Alright, alright. Next question. Instead of stock options and bonuses, I'm going to give new hires blank.

Haz Hubble (22:01.315)
Three of my favorite books.

Eric (22:04.922)
Okay. All right. Okay. Next question for you.

Haz Hubble (22:15.56)
I've had dinner with Richard Branson, so I'd have to say £25,000 cash.

Eric (22:24.25)
What was that dinner like?

Haz Hubble (22:29.067)
I spent a week on his island with him. We've had a lot of dinners together and been in his hot tub and played chess and all of this fun stuff. We have a good relationship.

Eric (22:31.974)
Come on.

Eric (22:48.134)
What was... Oh my god! Any words of wisdom that he said about... I'm sorry? Any words... No, I didn't! I didn't! And I'm glad I said his name, because I was actually going to say another person's name. This is so funny. Hot tubbin' with Richard Branson on his island, huh?

Haz Hubble (22:53.841)
You didn't expect that, did you? Say again. I said you didn't expect that.

Haz Hubble (23:06.026)
Yeah, it was the most surreal experience of my life. I was 14 and explaining to my mum why she should let me drop out because Richard Branson dropped out and didn't do university, you know? And then 10 years later to be chilling with the guy, it's the most surreal full circle that I think I've experienced. It was the best week of my life in many ways.

Eric (23:29.67)
Oh my god, very cool. All right, last question for you. The most interesting thing you did in the last 26 days, Haas.

Haz Hubble (23:36.718)
26 days. Let me check my... What? 26 days. Um... It would have been the... I keep saying it, I'm really sorry, but I went to the Sigma Squared Global Summit about three weeks ago and that was all of the global fellows coming together in one place in Lisbon and that was by far the most interesting because of all the same reasons I've already said.

Eric (24:02.338)
Yeah, yeah, how many were there? Approximately a couple hundred or more?

Haz Hubble (24:05.51)
Yeah, about 250 fellows out of 800. Obviously not everyone could come together at the same time, but that was a really good group of people. And then, you know, 50 ish investors and sponsors and people like that, mainly investors. And yeah, it's like a two day conference plus a week of co-working beforehand with a ton of activities around that. And it was, it was great. I mean, I met amazing people as I always do at these events and took away so much. There was a.

My favorite talk was this guy with Naveen Jain. He's a global billionaire, one of the richest people in the world, I believe. And his view on the world and solving problems was like nothing I've ever heard. And it inspired me in a completely new way. Like the way he thought about solving problems was amazing. I can tell you about it if you like, if you have time.

Eric (24:56.118)
Yeah, well, I will look him up on YouTube and maybe the audience will try to look him. Do you know if he's got any videos on the internet anywhere?

Haz Hubble (25:03.286)
I don't know, but I'm sure there'll be interesting things that he's posted. Naveen Jain.

Eric (25:08.663)
Alright, we'll check him out. And then final question for you because you said that you would gift your three favorite books to new hires. I'm curious, what are those books? How's it?

Haz Hubble (25:18.606)
So, so these are not necessarily the best ones to gift, but I'll just tell you my three, the three most impactful books for me. There was The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown. I read this when I was about 17, 18, and I was this over cocky teenager. And it helped me realize the power of not knowing the answer or being honest when you didn't know the answer. My defense mechanism was often like, even if I didn't know something, I would work it out.

on my own independently, when often asking for help would have been the quicker and better way to learn and to solve the problem. And this book basically helped me realize that and adapt my style. Black box thinking is another one. This is about how you look at mistakes and learning from mistakes. And it basically pits the aviation industry against the healthcare industry. And it's a really interesting comparison and it helps you.

I think just realize the value of not brushing things under the carpet, but implementing the right systems and analysis to understand where did you go wrong and how do you fix it next time. So that helps a lot. And then I think, ah, it's tough. I'm now tied. Either start with Why by Simon Sinek, it's a classic, or How to Win Friends and Influence People. Because again, I think every single word in that book is valuable.

Eric (26:41.402)
Yeah, it's one of my all-time favorites. I've probably read it a few times myself. Haas, thanks so much for being on Innovators Can Laugh.

Haz Hubble (26:47.842)
Thank you Eric for having me, it's been a pleasure.

Eric (26:50.454)
Yeah, yeah, I'll put show links to a praline.com Uh, or is it pratt? Yeah pali.com and any other place where people can learn more about you haas

Haz Hubble (27:00.09)
On Twitter, at hashubble is probably best.

Eric (27:04.894)
Okay. Fantastic for those listening. I will be back next week with another exciting entrepreneur who probably hasn't had lunch with Richard Branson and the hot tub, but nevertheless, they're doing exciting things here in Europe and abroad. Okay. Thank you for listening. And if you enjoy this, tell others about it. Eric signing off.