Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Noah Shinn joins the show to detail the rapid growth and product philosophy behind Instinct, an invite-only personal AI agent that operates through existing messaging channels rather than a dedicated app. He

Key takeaways

• Instinct is growing at approximately 10% day-over-day organically without any marketing spend, driven entirely by word-of-mouth and invite referrals.
• The platform has already processed over $1 billion in annual transaction volume despite remaining in an early invite-only phase with a small user base.

Main topics

• Instinct product architecture and user experience
• Agent-to-agent coordination and the Trusted Person Network

Notable quotes

I don't want to confuse the simple interface with limited ability because the whole nature of it is that there shouldn't be any new application needed to be able to interact with AI.

Conclusion

The episode underscores a fundamental shift from app-centric digital interactions to proactive, goal-driven personal assistants

Transcript preview

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Every action feeds Rogo Intelligence, the firm's context layer, turning years of deal experience into a secure, governed institutional memory that makes each new transaction stronger than the last. To learn more, visit rogo.com slash invest. Speaker 3 (1:03) OpenAI, Cursor, M3, and Vercel all have something in common. They all use WorkOS. To achieve enterprise adoption at scale, you have to deliver on core capabilities like SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and audit logs. Instead of spending months building these mission-critical capabilities yourself, you can just use WorkOS APIs to gain all of them on day zero. Visit WorkOS.com to get started. Speaker 4 (1:33) Noah, I know this is the first time that you're talking about the business in this long form like this. I'm incredibly excited to ask you all about it. It seems like we're in a moment with personal agents that is very similar and arguably probably bigger than what we saw with Code Generation a year or so ago. Maybe frame this up for us to begin. How are you thinking about the impact that, of course, your product, but these agents are going to have on the world? Why is this the area that you've chosen to dedicate yourself to completely? Speaker 2 (2:01) I think out of this will come a new way that most people on the planet interact with technology broadly. I run Instinct. It's a new company that I've started about a year ago. So it's still a new company. And we're building a personal assistant. I'm not going to spice it up because it's really just a personal assistant. And I think that the thing that has really enabled us to gain quite a bit of traction early and quite a bit of excitement early is it just works. Like it works in the way that... We all, we meaning I am also a user, have really been waiting for AI to act. This is not like any other transformational consumer app experience where it's the founder coming on and saying, I have this new vision for the world. Trust me on this. And in a few years from now, you guys will all get it. This is a very different moment of building product because you and I, we all already have this idea of what AI should act like. We've already had that idea since 2023 when we all started the brainstorm, when we started to use ChatGPT for the first time. That agent that is able to help you with effectively anything in your everyday life, whether it's something new and creative that you want to do, whether it's something that you traditionally spend several hours on and it takes a long time to develop. It's just everyday intelligence. It's meant to be with you, to act with you. It's meant to feel like a very simple interface. We actually don't even have an application. This is not a new app. This is not a new tool. It's a new experience. So it has a phone and a computer, so you can text it. You can call it. It can actually call you too. So I don't know if you've experienced this yet. I have. I think it's only called me about three times so far in the several months that I've been using it. But it's funny if there's something genuinely pressing and has a deadline, it will call you and it'll say, I don't want to bother you too much, but you need to sign this document by 3 p.m. and it's 2.55 right now. can you please do that? It's in your inbox. I can even send you another email to push it up to the top. It's socially intelligent and very socially aware. You can email it. It has its own email address. I don't want to confuse the simple interface with limited ability because the whole nature of it is that there shouldn't be any new application needed to be able to interact with AI. I think it should have the social intelligence and awareness to be able to act with you just like we do. with other people. It's really meant to be the simplest possible experience, yet the capabilities are, it has a computer, so it can do quite literally anything that you might want to do or that you do yourself on the internet. Speaker 4 (4:28) Tell us the couple craziest stories that come to mind for just things that have happened because of instinct. I ask this question because you're not programming to do any one thing. You're programming with a phone and a computer to be able to do anything. The US Open example, I think, is one that everyone's familiar with, this couple. They showed up on the Jumbotron and they wanted the video footage of it and somehow it went out and figured this out and brought it back to them, which is kind of crazy. What are your favorite couple examples of just wild things that have happened because of Instinct? Speaker 2 (4:56) For those that like online shopping, there's actually a group of people that are sharing this and making this a more recurring use case, which is scanning every piece of clothing in their wardrobe. So they go in their wardrobe and scan every single item, you know, every top and bottom and sock and, you know, whatever, shoes. And then they would scan themselves too. their face and their body and their proportions. And then they would go try on clothes and they would have it plan out their week in terms of what to wear. So every week with their existing wardrobe, what shoes to wear, what top to wear with this certain thing and this certain version of it. And then it would not send it as here are the items you should wear, like a bullet point list, but it would be them wearing it and showing. This is what today will look like. But not only that, it's also with shopping too. So they'll take those same capabilities, but then say, go shop on the internet. They come with thousands of outfits from so many different places. Like this one, here are the pieces from the top to bottom. And then they can just say order. So it'll come in with a thousand different options. Then they'll scan. Keep in mind, they're looking at themselves wearing the clothing. And then they'll be able to point to like, that one I really want. Can you send that to my house? Not only that, but they'll say every day, can you actually just come up with three creative... new outfits from head to toe and then send those to me. And then they're able to, with a click of a button, actually just get that new outfit. A lot of goal-oriented use cases too. Like a lot of, here's a certain personal finance goal that I have. Like I want to save this much money by this month. And it's actively working with them to be able to do that. Or users connect their bank accounts to Instinct and then it can scan over all the transactions and subscriptions that they've had and then surface that to the user and say, do you really? actually use this and then they're like oh no i didn't even know that and Speaker 4 (6:36) then it can go in the email and unsubscribe from it yes Speaker 2 (6:39) these popular consumer fintech products where they'll just surface it to you and then tell you like by the way you should cancel these this will go end to end so they go into the site sign in if there's some confirmation that goes to their email or it has access to the email so they use that and they sign in they go to the very end they cancel the subscription and then it just sends back the number of what it saved you like hey by the way you're saving two thousand dollars this month because of these things. Man, Speaker 4 (7:02) any product that's dependent on consumer laziness or inertia is toast, huh? Yes. That's good. Good for the consumer. Can you tell us about the instinct to instinct network? Oh, yes. The future of agents talking to each other? Speaker 2 (7:14) There are more practical scenarios where that is something new that I think will transform the way that certain people act in certain ways. I think it's only been around a week or so, or I guess 10 days. Honestly, Speaker 1 (7:25) the purpose of this is not to think about a Speaker 2 (7:27) new future to build, but more about... very busy working professionals. They're taking meetings all day long and they're constantly meeting with new people and existing people. The process of getting a meeting on the calendar is just so laborious. You text like, hey, you want to meet at this time? And then they say, no, that doesn't work. But these times work. And you say, oh, but I'm traveling. So maybe this time works and I'll be in this time zone though. And Speaker 1 (7:47) there's Speaker 2 (7:47) just Speaker 1 (7:47) so much back and forth Speaker 2 (7:48) there. However, if it was possible for the two users who were using Instinct, also brainstorming these times that they're available with Instinct anyways on two ends. are able to just communicate directly. Like the goal is just to find the time, right? We don't need to play this back and forth game and nobody's really playing games here. We're just trying to find time. That's been a very canonical use case, actually. I think the way that you can find time on a calendar now is just so different where you just say your intention. I want to meet with this person, ideally by the end of the week during these periods of time. Find me time. It will then coordinate with the other person's instinct to be able to find like one time is available or not and then eventually put something on the calendar. I think the key unlock here, we called it a trusted person network. The key is that you should only be connected with your trusted people. And there are some interesting social dynamics that are coming out into play that I've been learning about where it's designed such that you only bring in people who are trusted people who are not going to maliciously try to find out what your calendar is or what's in your email. But also we provide all the controls to be able to give different levels of access to different people. A lot of spouses actually coordinate their instincts because they can generally just share everything. So that might just be, this is my spouse, share anything with them, right? Maybe with certain colleagues, right? It's, hey, my work calendar is available. Certain parts of my inbox, if they're asking for documentation or something like that are available. But everything else, let's just keep that off limits. And it will be able to create that. When you think about this, there's almost these network effects that are built. through these nodes in the network with these different edges, with different weights too, right? It's not like a friend graph where you're just saying like, I'm connected to you and that's it. It's, I'm connected to you, I trust you. I have also configured it in this way such that there's varying levels of access. So it's this interesting network effect being created and different social dynamics that are being also explored and created as well. There are some interesting cases I've learned about where if somebody violates your trust within a network, there's an implication on that relationship itself. So let's say if you and I connected and Speaker 1 (9:46) I said, hey, Patrick, Speaker 2 (9:47) I trust you. Let's connect on the platform so that it's easier maybe the next time to put time on the calendar. And then you use that and you then start digging for certain data in a certain area. First of all, maybe I only gave you calendar access, right? But you're digging for data in a certain area. Then my instinct text me like, hey, by the way, Patrick's looking for this type of information. Now there's trust broken between the two of us. All of these little social dynamics that come into play, we've really thought about how to. curate this network such that you do get the benefit to schedule time and make plans with others and other things like that, but Speaker 1 (10:19) then Speaker 2 (10:19) also use some of the existing rules in society to be able to enforce both rules in terms of social cultural norms and also technical limitations in terms of what is visible and not visible. Speaker 4 (10:30) We're really going to see an entirely new order, aren't we? It's going to be fascinating. The number of things I can think of with my wife or something, this would make life so much easier in so many different ways so quickly. Little things like you were trying to find this house earlier. Like if I could just say to my instinct, hey, is no one nearby? Like, where is he? And you give me a one day permission or something like this. There's just so many ways to imagine it being useful. It's pretty wild. With Speaker 2 (10:54) the Trusted Network, we find a lot of very interesting cases. Example, use cases that are shared because it is the one part about the platform that is if every other area of the platform, the user generally has a good feeling of what it should act like. Here is just something new and creative. For example, I heard the other day of... When you're scheduling plans with friends or with a spouse or something like that, it's always an active act, right? It's like, okay, every Thursday, I'll think about something on the Saturday night about what I should do. And it's always this active act. And then you text the group, like, hey, do you want to do this? And then always somebody's not willing to do it. And then eventually, like falls apart. And that happens like every time. And then finally, when you get people together, that's when we were able to actually attend that event or whatever it might be. There's a friend group that put in every week. just brainstorm something creative that is interesting that we all like and actually just make it a different experience every week. But then it'll go through that every week and not only coordinate when everybody's available and what their interests are and if they like certain things or not like certain things or what shows are available or what concerts, you know, based on their music taste because all of their Spotify history connected and all, you know, that same friend group, a group of like six, they had one person order an Uber, but then that Uber to go around to all the six people and coordinate. hey, we'll pick you up in 10 minutes. And then the other person will pick you up in five minutes Speaker 3 (12:10) from here. And Speaker 2 (12:10) I found the optimal route to go and pick up all the people. And now they're all just sharing one Uber. So it's economically friendly. There's like all these random examples there of people discovering new use cases when you can finally remove the barriers of a lot of the rote social communication here and just Speaker 4 (12:26) remove all of the logistical burden. It's almost crazy how simple the explanation of this is, that it's easiest to literally just pretend you have a superhuman person. with a phone, a computer, an email address. They can call you just like dealing with a person and that's it. That makes me wonder how you think about everyone in the world having one of these, having an instinct, having an agent and how that will reorder things. Code has been incredibly exciting to watch. Of course, everyone listening has had their own version of a magical experience with making something, but not that many people were software engineers before this. It's a relatively small sect of people that have made code historically. Maybe now it's going to be way more. But this just seems like a different new market, new paradigm. How do you think this will start to reorder the world, the internet, commerce, etc.? What's the future of interfaces, I guess, is another way of saying it. Speaker 2 (13:16) I'll break this down in two parts, just so that we don't sound like complete abstract visionaries and saying that we're Speaker 4 (13:22) going Speaker 2 (13:22) to reinvent the internet. Although I'll be clear, I do think the internet is going to be rewritten. I think that the way that most people on the planet interact with software is going to be very, very different. To break it down, though. In the short and medium term, famously reservations is one where booking a reservation. Historically, how is that done? The human has to go onto the site to whatever restaurant that they care about and then click through the site and then put their, you know, two people this time and try to get it right. And then if they don't get it, they're just too late and it's first come first serve. But then now when you have an agent, you can theoretically just have the agent check every five seconds. Not just across that one restaurant that you really care about, that's your favorite restaurant you can't get in. Sure, that's one case. But what if it's doing that across every site in the world, for every restaurant in the world, in every major city? Now you can see how the agent is able to exploit just something simple like restaurant reservations. So if I go into that a little bit deeper, we have some exciting partnerships to be released in the future, but we are reinventing what the reservation system is, just in this one category, because it's important to our users. which is actually better for both sides. So if you take restaurant reservations from scratch, from the user's end, they want the reservation for the significant life event that they might have. It's a birthday, it's an anniversary, it's a friend coming in from out of town. And on the restaurant's end, they want interesting people, they want special occasions, they want to cater to those rather than maybe the local who keeps taking up a table once a night and there's no special event there. And traditionally, because of the way that the internet has worked, at least for reservations, it's been first come first serve. So anyone that comes in, no matter how important or how not important it might be, whoever gets in first gets the reservation. But what if you had the ability for the agent to be able to communicate on both sides, communicate, hey, this is important. This is actually the person's spouse's 30th birthday, a very special event is coming up. And the restaurant too can say, let's actually prioritize birthdays or major decade birthdays or major anniversaries or these certain people, I don't know, whatever it might be. With all the logistical burden of having to describe exactly what your case is and what's happening and why it's important, now we have the ability to perfectly match what does the restaurant want? What does the user want? That will result in more special events for the users being able to actually have a spot in the restaurant. And then on the restaurant's end, for them to be able to have a much better audience of people who it's all these different special events or special occasions. I don't mean to go so deep on restaurant reservations. That's just one example of a traditional model that is changing. I think the same case with a lot of the major travel agencies, honestly. 50 % of transaction volume that goes through our platform is due to travel. We're still running an invite-only program and it's quite early for us now, but we're approaching over a billion dollars a year in transaction volume through the platform. On a very small user base, there's already over a billion dollars a year. Transacting. 50 % of that is travel alone. Travel agencies that people not on Instinct yet use today to book hotels or flights or other things like that. What is the benefit of that interface? They properly unify from so many different services and so many different hotel chains and airlines and present it in a nice way to the user when now they can just click on an option, check out immediately through there and just see it in their email. It's a great experience. But I think there's an even better experience through Instinct or other similar interfaces where You can just say, I'm using a voice recording again because I'm trying to describe how easy it is. Hey, I need to be in New York tonight. This is immediate. And that's it. Well, what does that entail? That means that first, where is the user right now? Maybe you're in San Francisco. Maybe you're in LA or somewhere. Instinct, if you want, it can see your location. So it'll say, okay, you're in San Francisco. You need to be in New York. Let me first find all the options, all of the nuance too. What's the person's preferred airline that they'd like to fly at? What's the preferred seat type? In what class do you want to sit in? Do you want to be in an aisle seat or window seat or in the middle seat, etc.? What food options do you want to be delivered to you as well? What credit card would you like to use? Okay, and then it books that. That's the flight. Then it moves on to the hotel. Yeah, presumably it learns about you Speaker 4 (17:24) constantly, so your preferences are stored. That Speaker 2 (17:27) is the nice thing. If you tell it one thing, this is my style, this is what I like, this is where I like to stay. When you're staying anywhere in the future, it will be able to use that memory and be able to... Now make it a much easier experience for you in the future to be able to book that according to exactly what you want. But it'll be able to take that general taste, that general preference, and actually extrapolate that to anything else that you might want to book. So things just become very