// cleaned transcript · Oct 17, 2026
Derek: the conversation
This is the cleaned publication copy: noise, private topics and figures are removed and marked [redacted]. Line numbers match the original recording transcript.
L1Nix: What's up, man?
L2[redacted: private]
L3Derek: Hey, Nix?
L4Nix: Hey, what's up, brother?
L5[redacted: private, lines 5 to 9]
L10Nix: Okay. Well, how have you been?
L11Derek: I was sitting there like, ah, let me look back at the invite, and then I'm like, oh, there's a Zoom link in there.
L12Nix: Well, I'm glad you did, man. I'm glad you were persistent with it.
L13Derek: Yeah, so how are you? Nice to meet you. Thanks for, you know, putting an open invitation out there to chat.
L14Nix: Yeah, no doubt. Before we get started, I just want to get your verbal that you're okay with me posting your—have you seen the website and what I do?
L15Derek: No.
L16Nix: Okay, great. So go to omarchy.builders on your computer.
L17Derek: Okay.
L18Nix: And I'll do it too.
L19Derek: Omarchy.what?
L20Nix: Builders.
L21Derek: Omarchy builders?
L22Nix: Omarchy.builders.
L23Derek: Oh, omarchy.builders, that's what you said.
L24Nix: Yeah, that's a weird domain name.
L25Derek: I see more of them like that.
L26Nix: Yeah, they're happening. Pretty—I don't know why. I mean, you should just be able to put anything in there, but I don't know how it works.
L27Nix: So if you'll scroll down, you'll see Jethro, and you'll see all the others. And everybody, I basically do a full rundown about how they learn computers, where they ran into Omarchy, and basically just the whole, you know.
L28Nix: So the whole point is that I'm going to make one of these for you.
L29Derek: Oh, interesting.
L30Nix: So if you're not okay with that, then we'll just shoot the s*** for a couple minutes.
L31Derek: I'm okay with it. I would just only use my, I think, first name, maybe.
L32[redacted: private, lines 32 to 33]
L34Derek: Makes total sense. I've actually—my first—I'm new to Omarchy, and the first proof of concept that I built over the first weekend of having it installed is kind of a similar workflow to what you just described.
L35Nix: Nice. Well, how's it worked?
L36Derek: Well, I had developed a workflow back in February for a project that I'm working on to be able to shoot, like, podcast interviews inside my Tesla as, like, a YouTube video and do that as, like, an interview format. But so I was testing back in February, like, how can I make an AI-assisted checklist to try to make the production process as easy as possible?
L37Nix: Sure.
L38Derek: You know, so I had Gemini help me. I had some Gemini gems built that, you know, created thumbnails and, you know, helped me work through the list efficiently. Got it down to about 45 minutes to take a video from the car, process it, get it posted to YouTube, generate, like, the postable podcast version, transcript, summary, thumbnail, all that, right?
L39Derek: Had it down to about a 45-minute end-to-end process. I learned about Omarchy, and, you know, when I did all that, that was back in, like, February.
L40Derek: So it feels, in AI years, that feels like a lifetime.
L41Nix: No, that was garbage.
L42Derek: So I was trying to think, like, this Omarchy thing is really cool, but how can I, you know, I always want, like, a working prototype of something. Like, I want it to have to do something.
L43Nix: Right, right.
L44Derek: And so, but then it clicked for me. I'm like, I wonder if I could, like, just make it, like, basically an autonomous production process of the checklist I built. Why can't it do that?
L45Nix: Yeah.
L46Derek: So I have some other experience developing. Like, I run GrokBots through development teams with a development team.
L47Nix: Yeah.
L48Derek: Built in there, hopefully thing. So I knew kind of how to approach it from, like, okay, let me spec this out with Grok, develop my requirements, and then I put that into Omarchy, and I had Grok run at 4.7 running inside, you know, Omarchy is what I connected there.
L49Nix: Yeah.
L50Derek: And it, in one weekend, I mean, it took some debugging, you know, troubleshooting type stuff with the test file and all that, but in one weekend, I had it stood up end-to-end to drop a plug in my phone, pull the file automatically, and then post through the YouTube API to YouTube so that all I have to do is click publish and approve.
L51Nix: Well, I have one question for you. Can your Tesla do a kickflip?
L52Derek: I wish, but you know what? I grew up as a—there's no show I liked more than Knight Rider growing up.
L53Nix: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So what was your first computer?
L54Derek: My dad bought an Apple IIe for us at our house.
L55Nix: All right. Like, what was—were you allowed to touch it or?
L56Derek: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, he was—he's self-taught, actually. He was a history major that self-taught himself when Apple came out.
L57Nix: Right.
L58Derek: And then worked the whole rest of his career as a software developer, actually. Self-taught software developer.
L59Nix: No kidding. No kidding.
L60Derek: Yeah.
L61Nix: And so you went from an Apple IIe to, like, give me kind of the basic timeframe of, like, from that Apple IIe, like, what did you get into Windows? Like, when did you learn Linux?
L62Derek: Windows. Windows, yeah.
L63[redacted: private, lines 63 to 79]
L80Derek: Yeah, I think it's awesome. So the other thing that I thought, because I don't have like a Linux background, I'm not a developer.
L81Nix: You're better.
L82Derek: I'm a—I've always worked in tech, like my career in software and tech, and I even sold AI before it was cool. I sold AI data labeling services. Back in 2019, 2020, I was doing that.
L83Nix: Wow.
L84Derek: And that gave me—I mean, we were selling to everybody from San Francisco startups to robotics companies to all the way up to [redacted].
L85Nix: No kidding.
L86Derek: Yeah. So that gave me like a very good early preview of like where development was on a lot of different AI use cases at that time. And I've always been kind of like a nerdy sales guy, you know.
L87Nix: Right. Are you an SE or sales?
L88Derek: What's that?
L89Nix: Are you an SE or sales?
L90Derek: I'm like, I'd say go-to-market now. I have, you know, sales, marketing.
L91[redacted: private, lines 91 to 103]
L104Derek: Oh, yeah. It's such a—we're at such a—I mean, I've been, I would say, you know, I was, you know, following along and using ChatGPT and testing Gemini and Grok and all that, you know, over a year and a half ago for my work and all that. But I had this realization as it got towards the end of last year that, like, I was not as leading edge as I maybe had thought I was or wasn't paying attention to, maybe, is the right way to put
L105Derek: it. And so at that point, what?
L106Nix: I'm interrupted you terribly. Sorry. Go ahead.
L107Derek: Oh, you're good.
L108Nix: Go ahead.
L109Derek: No, I was just saying that I just went like more full steam ahead trying to really challenge myself to learn faster and do more.
L110Nix: Right.
L111Derek: So by, like, I guess it was February, I implemented with Claude's help. I don't—I still very use Claude code very little directly myself, but I use Claude to help me do the whole configuration and successful deployment of an instance of DeerFlow 2.0, which was something that came out right after, you know, the OpenClaw craze. But, and I was going to do OpenClaw, but then as I started reading more, I'm like, hey, this DeerFlow thing seems like a fundamentally better approach.
L112Derek: And so I went with that and stood up an agent running Claude on the back end for DeerFlow and was able to have it connected to Telegram and doing some things, built a website through it with, you know, pushing its own website updates. So just to, like, proof of concept that I could do all that.
L113Nix: Sure.
L114Derek: And that kind of helped propel me forward into what I'm doing now, which I feel like basically ever since GrokBot has come out two months ago and I got on there, it's been like, I cannot believe how much things have changed.
L115[redacted: private, lines 115 to 116]
L117Nix: So, there's, so, for example, remember when you were using that DeerFlow at the very beginning, how much work was it?
L118Nix: How long did it take you to get the Telegram hookup, like, completed? I bet it was kind of a pain in the ass.
L119Derek: It was like a bunch of, also because I was like, since I'm not really that technical and I don't, haven't used Claude code and I didn't use Claude code inside the CLI at that time, it was a lot of, like, I'm copying and pasting input, output, input, output, trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Teach me what's going on.
L120Nix: And that was.
L121Derek: So three months ago.
L122Nix: So three months ago?
L123Derek: No, that was like probably February.
L124Nix: Okay. So a little bit, a little bit of time back. But to your point about how fast it's going, now when you want to connect a thing, it's like, do you want me to connect that for you?
L125Nix: Boop.
L126Derek: Exactly.
L127Nix: Done. And it's only going to get easier and easier. And.
L128Derek: Right.
L129[redacted: private, lines 129 to 217]
L218Nix: So his system, he's used, do you use Tailscale?
L219Derek: I have read about that, but I have not used it yet. I'm high level familiar with the purpose of it though.
L220Nix: Like, imagine you have a switch on your desktop and you locally plug all your machines at home into that switch and they can all talk.
L221Derek: Right.
L222Nix: Well, now Tailscale basically, no matter where you are, puts everything on a virtual layer three. So you can be in Starbucks. The key to that, the key to that is when you're before it, when you're at home, you kind of work the different way.
L223Nix: And then when you got went somewhere else, you had to turn on a VPN and think about.
L224Derek: But you know why I haven't had to do that though? Because I was planning on it is the reason I haven't had to do that is because of GrokBot.
L225[redacted: private, lines 225 to 242]
L243Derek: So I have a Mac Studio that I invested in this year and it's been great because I just leave it on at my desk. And then GrokBot is just like going to town on that.
L244Nix: That's right. So here's what you want to do. So install Tailscale on all your devices.
L245Nix: It's completely free. I don't know why they don't charge because it's like the most amazing thing that I use.
L246Nix: It's the glue that puts all my stuff together, everything. Like I'm, I am a Tailscale lunatic.
L247Nix: And it's free and there's a, there's an app, there's a client for your phone, for Linux, for everything, for Android, for your Apple TV, doesn't matter. It's got a, so every device that you own, no matter where, and even like I have a bunch of compute up in, like, you know what a VPS is?
L248Nix: Like a Linux box in the cloud.
L249Derek: Yeah.
L250Nix: So I have a bunch of those and they all have Tailscale. So all of my compute and everything, they can all see each other because they're all basically on the same layer three. Right?
L251Nix: So what I suggest you do is for your laptop that you like go to Starbucks with and all your machines, put Tailscale on it. Put Tailscale on your, what did you say?
L252Nix: Is it Mac Studio?
L253Derek: Yeah.
L254Nix: Put it on there. Then run a thing called amphetamine, which is free on the App Store and it keeps your Mac from falling asleep.
L255Nix: And then if you want to run local, how much RAM do you have in your studio?
L256Derek: It's a 256.
L257Nix: 256? My man. So run Ollama on that.
L258Derek: Yeah.
L259Nix: And then if you're on Tailscale, then you can use your compute no matter where you are and you've got local GPU anywhere in the world.
L260Derek: Right, yeah.
L261Nix: You see where?
L262Derek: I mean, I've got a form of that with the GrokBot setup, but what I can't do, for example, is just, you know, I can access the Mac virtually if I need to. If I need to do something on it virtually, I have that ability, you know, that I set up, but it's just with that machine. So Tailscale will allow me to get on my, but I didn't even say this back at the beginning when you're asking me about getting on Omarchy.
L263Derek: That was only like probably three weeks ago I got on there.
L264Nix: Yeah.
L265Derek: But I used my old work laptop that's like a five-year-old HP that was left for dead.
L266Nix: Yeah.
L267Derek: And it didn't even work right. Like the screen was all buggy and s***.
L268Nix: Yeah.
L269Derek: And I'm like, well, I guess I'll install it on this and see what happens. It runs like it gave it a new life.
L270Nix: Yeah, butter.
L271Derek: No bugginess with the screen, runs much faster and did all that stuff on it, like I said. So, but it's not going to be, you know, it's still not that powerful of a computer. So eventually.
L272Derek: I'm going to want to be able to access it virtually and do more with Omarchy, I'm sure.
L273Nix: Yeah. So my suggestion is that you put Tailscale on the studio, run Ollama because you got like a lot of horsepower there because you basically, you know, with the.
L274Derek: Yeah, I've ran a lot of models on it already.
L275Nix: Okay. So now you got that. Now you can take it on the road with you.
L276Nix: So it's not limited to that.
L277Derek: Yeah, I get it.
L278[redacted: private, lines 278 to 297]
L298Derek: Yeah, no, I'm working on very similar things both for my day job and my personal projects. So it resonates 100%.
L299Nix: Cool. So what brought you, like how did you, what were you, clicked, were you just, how did Omarchy meet your eyeballs and what made you go, you know what, I'm going to do that? Like what was the.
L300Derek: I follow a lot, you know, I follow a lot of AI tech stuff on X. And so at some point it just came across me on X. And oh, you know, and what, so I was aware of it, but I wasn't doing anything with it or learning about it, but I'm like, oh, that seems interesting.
L301Derek: And then I signed up for the SpaceX, like Luma app, that was where they had those live trainings through there on when they did the build a business in a week thing. And then I was, I was searching around the Luma app and I'm like, oh, look at this, a local meetup on Omarchy.
L302Derek: And so I went to the local meetup and that's what kicked my ass in gear was I'm like, well, if I'm going to go to this meetup, I need to bring a computer with it installed on it. And so I just like, I sat down one night, you know, the night before, had GrokBot teach me how to walk me through how to do the whole setup and process, did that successfully.
L303Derek: And then went there to, you know, with it installed, but I didn't even have GrokBot connected yet to it. I didn't really know what I was doing.
L304Derek: And so it was perfect because there were people there that just helped me, you know, like, oh, try this, set that up, do this, explain some stuff to me of how to think about it. And I'm like, wow, this is freaking awesome.
L305Nix: Well, the reason that it's, Omarchy is game changing, I think, is running Claude code on Mac is nice, but at some point when you're asking it to modify the system and you get aggressive about what you're trying to do on the Mac, you bump into the binaries and you really can't get past that.
L306Derek: Exactly.
L307Nix: Apple kind of locks it down with security and it's really for like, no, I'm not trying to be elitist, but it's for the casual users to protect them, right? And to protect Apple. So when you get to Omarchy, you, all that's taken away and the AI is a first-class citizen.
L308Nix: And so it clicked with me in a couple of days. Like, okay, I get this now and I understand.
L309Nix: And now when I get on my Mac, I use Omarchy probably 90% of the time and Mac is more business related.
L310Derek: Yeah.
L311Nix: So probably you're saying yourself. So I get sit down at my Mac and the first thing I do is like super key trying to move the, ah, like machine.
L312Derek: That's got a lot of freaking keyboard shortcuts, man. I don't, I'm not used to that, but.
L313Nix: It'll be a pain in the ass and you'll understand three of them. And then a couple days, like you'll look for something and then you'll add another one.
L314Derek: Yeah.
L315Nix: And then like a weekend, like about.
L316Derek: Learn by doing.
L317Nix: It'll just start clicking and you won't even, it'll be muscle memory.
L318Derek: Yeah, I get that.
L319Nix: So what personal projects are you willing to talk about? And when I say willing, I mean like, you know, I'm not asking you to share stuff that's high, you know, that's, you know what I mean? Like what can you talk about?
L320Nix: So I would like to get into interviewing you to get more content for your story.
L321Derek: Oh, cool. So, yeah, well, I am, you know, that's, I've got a lot, some projects on the back burner and some, I'd say, you know, last year when I was trying to challenge myself to learn more about the tools, I was focusing initially on like video and content creation. So I was using, I signed up for Google Veo 3 when it first came out.
L322Nix: Right.
L323Derek: And I started making like a variety of videos. I made a short form YouTube series.
L324Nix: And everything that you say, make sure you give like your username and how people.
L325Derek: Yeah, yeah. This one I'll share. I mean, it's out there.
L326Derek: Anybody can find it. It's on YouTube.
L327Derek: It's called Redshift 2035. It's just like three little trailers of me piloting with Veo 3.
L328Derek: But what I was doing was I was taking.
L329Nix: What's a Veo 3?
L330Derek: Veo 3 was the name of the Google clip generating tool for generating video.
L331Nix: Okay.
L332Derek: Eight second video clips.
L333Nix: Okay, okay.
L334Derek: But the problem was each eight second video clip is completely siloed from everything else. So it was at that time when I was doing this, you didn't have these tools that gave you different ways of creating character continuity and visual continuity. And so the whole thing that I was solving for was, can I have like a prompting workflow and template workflow that authors the prompts in such a way that I can maintain enough character continuity to actually splice these eight second clips together in CapCut in a
L335Derek: way that actually feels like a just a little YouTube short, you know, like around, you know, a minute long. And so the concept was, can I create like a short form minute at a time episode series that's like a sitcom? And if I, I tell you, if I had time, I'd still be working on it, but I just don't have time because I'm doing so much other stuff.
L336Derek: But there's three, three episodes on there. The premise of it is, it's called Redshift 2035 and it's set on Mars and it's based on the story of what happens when the first group of astronauts actually gets to Mars.
L337Derek: And in this scenario, it's like, it's the whole point is that the robots, the Optimus robots have already been there for a long time building everything. And it turns out that they have their own Optimus culture already and they like are there to serve the humans, but they like to f*** with the humans.
L338Nix: I love it. I love it.
L339Derek: Yeah.
L340Nix: Awesome.
L341Derek: Yeah. So that was the concept. And I hope I get to work more on that soon because the tools have gotten so much better to produce.
L342Derek: Yeah.
L343Nix: Do you think Omarchy could help you with your workflow there to make it better?
L344Derek: Oh my God. It's like all the ideas going off in my brain as I do this stuff is crazy. But I have another project I'm working on, which I'm about to launch the website for and the Substack for that I've been working on heavily since GrokBot came out.
L345Derek: I had been planning it a little before that, but that project is called Sovrenly AI. There's no real website up for it yet, but the whole premise of that project is that I believe that we're shifting from businesses buying just software to do stuff in to the need for businesses to buy preconfigured sort of AI workflows and agentic solutions to do a thing.
L346Nix: My man. That's right. That's right.
L347Derek: I'm loosely coining, I was trying to come up with the other, the other day. I'm like, I've worked in SaaS, you know, but this is not SaaS. So what do you call this now?
L348Derek: And the only thing I could get to is I, I still don't love this, but I started saying outcomes as a service.
L349Nix: Okay.
L350[redacted: private]
L351Nix: Yeah.
L352Derek: So to me, that's, that's where this is all going. And so, but my whole approach was Sovrenly and I'd love your follow-up take on this as somebody that knows b******* from like other, you know, whatever. I'm not trying to post AI slop.
L353Derek: I'm trying to really approach it humbly as a person who's not a dev trying to educate myself, but in a very deliberate, research-oriented, data-driven way. So basically right now what I've been doing for the last month is I have GrokBot supervising structured model tests on my studio with Qwen and DeepSeek and Gemma.
L354Nix: Yes.
L355Derek: But not, I started with single model task runs just for validating that I could gather the data. So GrokBot is supervising the runs and then logging all the data to an Airtable database. And, but now I've advanced in the testing to where I have this kind of theory of a, how to structure like an agentic team of workers to do tasks, broadly speaking.
L356Nix: Yeah.
L357Derek: And so I'm starting to test more workflow-oriented tasks across multiple open source workers and checkers. And I'm now combining that with also a frontier model, which is GrokBot 4.7 through the XAI API. And so I'm starting to play with now, like how do you assemble to leverage open source as much as possible?
L358Derek: But I'm not, I'm not religious about open source. I'm practical.
L359Derek: I'm outcome-driven in this whole thing. So, so my.
L360Nix: And a capitalist, right?
L361Derek: Right. So my, my, my hypothesis is that it would be natural to a business, depending on the use case, obviously it all factors in, but they're going to want some degree of data privacy, some degree of control and configurability, and some degree of cost efficiency. So, and, and get the outcome at the end of the day.
L362Derek: And every use case or business has, you know, falls on those preference scales probably a bit differently, but my hypothesis is that if you have like sort of preconfigured agents and systems designed for certain use cases or vertical, you know, needs, that there's a lot of value in that, that that's really where the value is going forward and that you could do a lot of it with open source tools and endow those clients with the power of open source appropriately depending on their, their desires, but still
L363Derek: leverage frontier where it makes sense. And so, so the testing that I'm running, long story short, the testing I'm running on my studio right now is trying to very deliberately and sort of with a scientific, you know, mindset, measure these workflows in different configurations with different open source models doing the tasks and, and, and frontier model in there, measure all of that both in terms of speed and quality and be able to write that up as sort of published shareable research, so to speak, that anybody can
L364Derek: have and learn from. So I'm trying to publish that as a way to not only learn, but then, you know, hopefully if I end up building some preconfigured recipes or products to, to, to help, you know, some businesses out there, hopefully that helps, you know, establish some credibility around it and data-driven, you know, solution kind of thing.
L365Nix: Yeah. So a couple of follow-up questions on that, but I need to make sure I need to do some housekeeping that I didn't do before. What's your, what's your X?
L366[redacted: private]
L367Derek: Yeah, my, my, well, let me put it in right here.
L368Nix: Your X handle.
L369Derek: Where's the chat? Here we go. There you go.
L370Derek: That's me.
L371Nix: All right. And next question, do you have a GitHub?
L372Derek: Not one that's like shared yet. I will with Sovrenly though.
L373[redacted: private, lines 373 to 374]
L375Derek: Oh, I'm sure we could.
L376Nix: I'm sure we could. We'll lock it right up to two. And I just followed you back and said I wouldn't follow you before.
L377Nix: So let's get back into those requirements and the ways that you're building and the projects that you're doing. Talk to me about, and this isn't a slide on you, talk to me about your ability to do that six months ago versus what you can do now.
L378Nix: I think you know where I'm going with this. Like you probably could have like brute forced and maybe figured it out six months ago, but how does the combination of Omarchy plus AI and where we are now, like what does that give you an ability to do today?
L379Nix: And you're not, you're not technical.
L380Derek: Yeah. Well, six months ago, it would have been brute forcing inputs and outputs via Claude in a very not practical way for my time realistically. And what's changed is now that I can supervise GrokBot teams, I can get so much more done correctly that didn't exist six months ago in that whole setup.
L381Derek: So that's been a game changer. And then on the Omarchy side, I have, I don't feel like I've fully harnessed that for the research that I'm running yet, but I do have a plan for that.
L382Derek: But where I see Omarchy going is as one of the cornerstone options of what I might do for Sovrenly for a customer that wants it is if they really want to the more open source way of doing the thing, then we can say like, okay, let's build this in Omarchy for you if you're not, but other customers are going to be like, nope, I need it on Linux or Windows or whatever. And so I think it's all about configurability for the customer and their needs and where
L383Derek: they're at and what they really prioritize. And that's one of the things I'm trying to bring to this is not predetermine what everybody should have. Like how do you, we should be able to work in a day and age where if I've defined what the workflow needs to do, there's a way to do it for a customer in a variety of configurations, right?
L384Nix: Wow, that's amazing because you've done, like there's more people out there that are not technical and then there's people like you that claim you're not technical, but like if you go to Kroger, you know more about computers than everybody in Kroger, but you claim you're not technical. Like there's different levels, right?
L385Derek: Yeah. I'm not a coder.
L386Nix: Right. So what would you say to, what would you tell somebody that's on the fence that's like smart like you, maybe not like super geeky smart, but you've got persistence, you know what you want, you know what the outcome looks like. Like talk, walk me through how like six months ago you still had those ideas, but maybe even now that your brain has been open, like your ideas are even getting stronger.
L387Derek: Oh yeah.
L388Nix: Talk to me about how like you wouldn't even have dreamed of even walked through allowing yourself to shoot that high six months ago. So go take that and run with it.
L389Derek: I'll give you Sovrenly as a perfect example. I was developing the idea of Sovrenly six months ago, but all I was doing at that point was like I downloaded some models. I, you know, hadn't even really ran them yet.
L390Derek: I didn't know or have a, I didn't even know or have a thought of like what the actual deliverable would be for a customer. I'm just like, well, I'm just going to publish research and build an audience and see what happens.
L391Derek: That was my intent then. And building GrokBot teams, it was the unlock for me that showed me that, you know, if one of my skills in my career has been delegation really, and, and, and being able to work with a team of people to decide like what needs to get done and okay, let's prioritize this and kind of coordinate things.
L392Nix: That is a skill that most people don't have.
L393Derek: Yeah. And so I feel like because that's something that I've had to do in life, once I kind of, it kind of clicked in GrokBot that I could build and, and I had done enough reading and research and other things to realize the power of how to set up sort of a systems thinking approach to GrokBot. So I mean, I have, I just counted yesterday in my GrokBot account, I have 44 bots in there, but I really only talk to about eight on a regular basis.
L394Derek: So I've got, you know, a category, several bots that are for personal life, then some that are for Sovrenly, and then several that are part of another project we haven't talked about. But there, the ones that I have, for example, working for Sovrenly, it's, it's got a, it's got an org chart, right?
L395Derek: And so I've got, you know, a head of marketing, I've got a head of product and development, I've got a head of content, you know, and.
L396Nix: You know how to like force them to talk, right? You can app like, okay, good.
L397Derek: So I've got, and I've got two parallel product teams and two projects, one of which we talked about, one of which we didn't. The other day I'm like, and you know who Dr. Eggbot is, right?
L398Nix: Yes, I do. I have him.
L399Derek: Dr. Eggbot's awesome, right? So I pulled Dr.
L400Derek: Eggbot, my two product managers, and my two senior devs all into one chat with all five of us in there. And I called it engineering collab.
L401Derek: And I'm like, let's conversation about XYZ and are we doing things good enough? And let's look at it this way.
L402Derek: And I, you need to talk amongst yourselves and then come back to me with a plan and assessment of like where are we at and what should we change and why.
L403Nix: Wow.
L404Derek: And it's so cool.
L405Nix: Have you changed the icons for your bots?
L406Derek: I haven't messed, I color code them. I, but I, they all have.
L407Nix: Sell it to make custom icons. It's amazing. Like I'm in my little store, so everybody's like a CP3O.
L408Nix: Like you can do anything. Like we.
L409Derek: Yeah, I haven't even, I haven't even gone there yet.
L410Nix: Like you don't, you can keep your color scheme, but just make them like custom icons, like make it a marketing icon in your color scheme. All right, we only got six minutes left. So what's next for you?
L411Nix: Like where are you taking this? Where do you see yourself?
L412Nix: Like what's your abilities? Like humans typically think, okay, that's it.
L413Nix: And I believe that you're the kind of guy that goes, okay, I'm here now, but it's going higher. Like you can see that you've got to do more.
L414Nix: What's next for you?
L415Derek: My, my, my dream is to have a profitable, my dream is to be working for myself, running two, two sort of core businesses.
L416Derek: One that is digital and able to help anybody, that's Sovrenly, that allows me to work in my passion for, for AI, open source solutions that deliver Sovrenly will is, is what I hope to be doing that with.
L417[redacted: off the record]
L418Nix: Wow.
L419Derek: And so, so my, my dream is to be 24/7 working on this stuff for the benefit of businesses everywhere with Sovrenly and in my local market where there's real people and real relationships because you, they really matter locally, actually hopefully helping to facilitate the adoption of two technologies that I'm just like all in on.
L420Nix: That's great. I'm predicting that before 2030, there will be a trillion dollar company that does not exist today that's run by a hundred people.
L421Derek: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, I think for sure.
L422Nix: And I want it to be you and I want to work for you.
L423Derek: Well, that's very nice, but I, I don't want to get that big. I'm happy with the, I'm happy with, you know, doing good, good stuff.
L424[redacted: private family detail]
L425Nix: Well, you've been pretty successful, I can tell.
L426Derek: Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, yeah, I think, you know, the, the, the theme for me has been like I have all these ideas all the time, but the beauty of where we're at right now and what we're all having opportunity is you, you can actually do something with all these ideas with the same amount of time, you know, and, and that's a, that's a capability or an opportunity that wasn't there before.
L427Nix: Keep going. This is great.
L428Derek: Yeah. No, I mean, that's, that's, we're all, we all, it's like there's been this great reset, you know, because it's like pre-AI, it was like, well, you could grind it out on e-commerce. You want to open up a drop shipping store and grind out for like, you know, 5% margin?
L429Derek: No, I don't want to do that.
L430Nix: Right. Optimize your searching, your Google search.
L431Derek: Yeah. It's like it's game changing. And in fact, don't even, you know, if we talk again, what we're going to talk about is all agentic traffic exceeding all human internet traffic this year and it never going back in like three years from now.
L432Derek: It's going to be like a thousand X agentic traffic on the internet compared to humans. And that's the play.
L433Nix: I heard that it's about to overtake Netflix traffic.
L434Derek: Yeah, of course. No, I'm talking about number of agents searching on the internet.
L435Nix: But over 60% of internet traffic today is streaming.
L436Derek: Yeah.
L437Nix: I hear what you're saying.
L438Derek: But yeah, I think, I think optimizing for bots as website visitors, not even website, but like visitors to your digital presence and consumers of your information and purchasers of your product, that's all going to be agentic. And so the question is, how do you skate to where that puck is going?
L439Nix: I would, I would encourage you and challenge you on your projects to build in MCP servers and code to what you're doing because the future is small companies that produce APIs and MCPs to allow customers to consume their products.
L440Derek: Exactly. A hundred percent. And it makes you so much more scalable.
L441Derek: Like I've seen companies spend an enormous amount of resources just on UX designers.
L442Nix: Yes. Yes.
L443Derek: Okay. What if we don't have to do it that way anymore?
L444Nix: Right. Or what if there's no UI at all?
L445Derek: That's what I mean.
L446Nix: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
L447Derek: UX and UI. Like think about enormous effort that goes into UX and UI alone.
L448Nix: Yes. And customer service and, and, and, and. Well, hey man, I feel like.
L449Derek: Great connecting. Thank you so much for putting yourself out there and inviting it. It was really nice meeting you.
L450Nix: Yeah. I don't want to say goodbye. Like I'll say, so long, see you soon.
L451Derek: Yeah, till next time.
L452Nix: No b*******. Like I will take your call. I will help you.
L453Derek: Thank you. Likewise.
L454Nix: Yeah. And like I appreciate that. So.
L455Derek: I want you to, when I start putting up content, I'll share it with you and I'd love to get your feedback.
L456Nix: Just tag me. I do a lot of free stuff to help people with their projects and I'll, I'll do free PR. Do you know what PRs are?
L457Nix: PR is the pull request?
L458Derek: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
L459Nix: So I'm, I'm, I'll definitely run PRs. I've got my whole system back, back up to, it does not try to change your features or your design. It just looks for port bugs and minutiae.
L460Derek: Yeah. Cool. Cool.
L461Derek: Well, very great to meet you.
L462Nix: Where are you, by the way? Like where, where in the world are you?
L463Derek: North Carolina.
L464Nix: North Carolina. Okay.
L465Nix: Cool.
L466Derek: Oh, neat.
L467Nix: So I got to go. I got 30 seconds. I'd like to give you the final 30 seconds to just say what you want to tell the world.
L468Derek: Well, I didn't come here planning to tell the world anything. I guess.
L469Nix: That's, that's still telling the world something.
L470Derek: I didn't, I thought we were just having a Zoom meeting, but gosh, I would say, you know what? I watched, you know, the Roadster Live Thursday night that I was looking forward to for so long.
L471Derek: And I found myself feeling just this tremendous sense of pride in American ingenuity and also optimism and inspiration.
L472Nix: That's right.
L473Derek: That today things are possible and the opportunity to deliver things, you know, and create things has never been better. And I hope the people, not everybody's builders, but I hope the people that have ideas see that, you know, they can dream bigger and make things happen way faster.
L474Nix: Love it, man. Talk to you soon.
L475Derek: Yeah. Thank you.
L476Nix: Thank you.
L477Derek: Take care.
L478Nix: You too. Bye-bye.