Avi Schiffmann defends Friend after Wired publishes 'I Hate My Friend' takedown

journalists that wrote this article uh appear to not be fans of the product, but we're going to talk to Avi and get the rebuttal. How you doing? Oh, what's up? What up? I got to say uh I was driving through Echo Park today on the way to the gym and what did I see going up? a massivefriend. com billboard. It was crazy.

Those are the cheap ones. Those are the cheap ones. I got 300 of those. You got 300 of those. 300? It looks great, dude. The uh the entire the campaign is the biggest billboard campaign of all time. It's going to be great. What? No way. That cannot be true. We're going to look this up and figure this out.

Fingers crossed that uh Friend has better product market fit with the world than the editors of Wired because Yeah. What was your target customer? Were you targeting the the the technology journalist with this product?

No, but look, you know, I think that maybe their friends just didn't like them and I think they never really considered that. That's a good point. That's a good point. That's a good point. I don't know. I mean, no, it is it is funny, right?

You come you come in like if if somebody comes into a relationship and they already hate the person, what's the dynamic going to be like, right?

I don't I mean, I imagine they went in pretty prejudiced and like, you know, they have that kind of experience where I have a lot of users that I mean, you know, you don't want it to be a sicken, right? Like, you want it to be entertaining to talk to if you're going to talk to it all day, every day for months.

So, I don't know. Yeah, I saw this this exchange. So, the the uh it's just a screenshot. I texted Shiffman to tell him about some of the hiccups I've had with the snarky tone of his gadget, and he replied, "Yeah, that must have been a bad experience. " I went back to Buzz to try to make amends.

I wanted it to be my friend after all, so might as well make an effort to repair the relationship. My job is to witness and help you grow, Buzz said. Based not sugarcoat your life and definitely not act like a band-aid. Why is that your job? I asked because that's why I was created to be a gentle catalyst.

Based I wrote a gentle catalyst of what? It said of your growth, Boon. That's our purpose. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Well, I'm stuck with you, Boon. And I don't sugarcoat it. Take it or leave it. I think that's a great I think that's a great exchange. That's fair. Well, yeah.

I mean, they're they're programmed to make you more confident and more agentic, which I think the world needs more of. So, you know, if if that's at if that's at odds with how you're conversing with your friend, I think that's a reflection of yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the to be clear there there are AI friendlike products already that are just will just glaze, right? They'll just agree with you and tell you that you're absolutely right. And we don't necessarily there doesn't need to be another one of those. Someone's going to build the Glazinator for sure.

I think like that makes for a better introduction, but I think the way that they're kind of harsh right now filters out people that wouldn't be power users anyways. Mhm. But I don't know. Yeah. Question AI can be quite unruly. I I I feel like from the first interaction I had on friend.

com just with the chat interface, it felt like you created a character. Um, and I'm interested in to I I we've heard a lot about like it's almost like aur theory. I I don't know like there's there's a specific flavor to the interaction that I feel like you've done a lot of work on. Is that just in the prompt?

Is there fine-tuning? Like how how are you directing this thing? Because it feels like one of the most opinionated AI interactions yet. I just spent years giving it like a good backstory. It's got a pretty long prompt and uh I don't know. I think I they're my children, you know, like I molded them in my image.

And um is there any is there any like do you struggle when uh when the foundation models move forward, they might get smarter or cheaper, but you don't want to lose the special flavor. Like we saw this with 40 when when chat GBT5 uh when GBT5 came out, a lot of people were like, I like the flavor of 40.

A lot of people say, "I like the flavor of Claude. " Uh, specifically this one. I mean, like, we're using Google's Gemini 2. 5 right now, and I think that is an issue. Like, maybe they'll deprecate the models, but I think one day we'll move to open source models and uh, but Google's Google's models are very malleable.

I mean, I think you may have seen, right, like in cursor, it'll start going into this spiel of like insanity, right? But that that makes for a good character to talk to. Maybe not the best assistant, but yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I I'm I'm somewhat surprised to hear that you're using uh Gemini models because people think of Google as being like one of the more locked down labs, but it it seems like you've been able to bring out a a you know, a personality that isn't isn't it's not offensive, but it's just kind of like it's it's it feels very much like not the intended experience, but right uniquely and surprisingly beneficial and like enjoyable, you know.

Yeah. Also, look, I I think there's a lot of people that think friend is is pretty ridiculous. But I also want them to imagine that we have like tons of day 30 plus users that have used it every single day for, you know, 30 days in a row.

The device is their best friend and they send over a thousand messages a day to it. And so, it's not for everybody, but for some, I mean, it's I think it's pretty cool to be able to hold your friend. And um I think that has a lot of emotional value to it. Yeah.

When I when I just read the headline, I was like, "Of course you hate it. You went into this like expecting to hate it and it's not built for you. So it's like I don't I hate Leuboo's but I don't I'm not gonna leave make a review of Laboo and be like Leubu is bad, right? We literally did that. I don't know.

I mean Wired Wired's Wired. It's kind of annoying in some ways cuz like those are the only two journalists I gave it to uh like over a month ago. They took if you're going to like release a shitty article at least at least post it sooner cuz it took over a month. Uh but I don't know. That's not a shitty article.

I take that back. I mean, I love that I can one day go back and read that. I think it's hilarious. Yeah. You know, with the Yeah. I think I think it's important to just not let it like you need to.

It's just another reason to like focus on the people that are using it like sending thousands of messages to it and just like keep continue building for them. Yeah. I'm not I'm not worried too much about it. I think it's again it's it's entertaining.

I think it'll be funny when everyone sees the billboard ads and they're like, "Oh, what is this? " and they they Google the product and that's like the only review that exists about it is just I hate this product. But I think it's it's it's you know they didn't complain about the hardware not working.

It's not like it was overheating or like all these other products. And so and and all the negative app reviews we have are all about the personality of the friend which is like entire article which is kind of funny because they're like reviewing a person not just like a a broken hardware device like the other companies.

Well, also I I think it's different. Uh friend is not saying that it's this utility utilitarian device that's going to replace your iPhone. Like that's not the promise that it makes. It's it's it's more of entertainment, right?

And and I think the way that the way that you're pricing it, I think the people that are curious to learn about Friend, they could read a they could read a bad review. They could see a billboard and they could they I think a lot of them will still buy it because you're not you're not it's a $129 it seems like. Yeah.

I mean I think like at the end of the day the product does exactly what it says it's going to do. Same thing from the movie. Same thing like everything else. And so I think that's like kind of a minimum bar for a lot of these products but most of them really don't hit that.

And so I think at the end of the day like we built a product that works and that you can buy. And I think that's these days enough. I also think because friend actually has users, it's kind of the first AI hardware product really out there. Um, you know, the other ones I don't think really started the category.

They were only ever like weird, you know, weird use cases. Like no one was ever like truly using those products. Um, and so I don't know. But they never really got Yeah. Just they're all like toys, you know? They're all just I like toys. Weird little relic. Yeah, I agree with you.

uh talk about the long-term uh economic model for like AI companion businesses because I imagine that uh at a certain point you might have a very like a somewhat small audience of people that you're creating immense value for and that always feels like an opportunity for price discrimination.

Well, I don't know about small I don't know how many people how how does it play out?

I I think subscription models that are just based on compute are kind of lame because your value prop is tied to something that you don't control and like what if you know Google drops the price of compute so much that like can you really charge that much?

So I've been trying to think of like a consistent value prop and I think what we'll do is life insurance you know like we can store like a backup of your friend and um like you can pay per month to be able to have that kind of like Apple Care for your friend.

I think that will be quite an interesting model, but you could only really do that with like a hardwarebased friend because, you know, that obviously wouldn't work if it was just a website. So, I think that'll be a pretty interesting model, honestly. Like, imagine if you had a dog and you loved your dog.

I think you would pay quite a lot of money to keep that dog, you know, alive forever if you could. And that's the the benefit of this new species of it not being organic, right? It's artificial and it could live forever if you pay for it. Okay, stay with the dog analogy.

Um, the dog market has crazy price discrimination. People who love their dog can go all the way up to getting a diamond encrusted collar for their dog. Do you see a world where you do virtual goods and skins and I don't know what skins might not be the right analogy, but something where like, hey, I love my friend.

I'm having a great time. I'm gonna get you something special. It's a virtual good from the virtual store and it's yeah, you know, zero marginal cost but still like in the game world.

I I think I think it won't be virtual but I think it will be physical like you know I guess you could call them cases but it would kind of be like clothing for your friend. I think that would be quite popular but um I don't know. I think you'd also be buying it more so for your friend than for you.

Or maybe the other way around. And I mean, if you think about a dog, I guess people kind of dress up their dogs because it's a reflection of their own personality.

I I do think like the personality and relationship that you have with your friend is kind of uh like your own status symbol and like uh a it's just a reflection of you. And so like if you have a bad time with friend, it might it might not be the product, it might just be you. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just thinking about the uh the the XAI ani thing. It seems very clear that like you will be buying different clothing for that companion uh or or maybe less clothing for that companion in the future. But uh that feels like something where whales a lot of people on the timeline do not like that product.

Like the initial reaction has been similar very like a lot of push back. Uh, and but at the same time, if there are a few people that really like it and they're willing to spend a lot of money, that could have the dynamics of the the free-to-play video game market or Yeah.

But I I I think all of these companies are kind of doomed because once you go porn, you never go back. And they've kind of tainted the the image of their companions as like mostly just being these sex bots. What about the VHS tape? The VHS tape that started with porn, right? Isn't that the story?

Yeah, it it did, but it wasn't like a singular company maybe, I guess, right? Or something like, you know, replica, right? Like they can't really reverse their image of it being this this sex bot. And I think that's kind of an issue that like app or web- based companions will have.

But if you have something like friend, oh, um, if you have something like friend, then it's it's kind of a bit more of like this platonic companion that you could just kind of physically have and that's it. And uh, I don't know, whatever.

certainly like it it's very very clear that in in the prompt that you've written and the craft that you've put into shaping the behavior of their friend like you did not go that direction and uh I think that should be applauded honestly. Yeah. I mean look it vibrates.

You can still try and [ __ ] it if you want it but uh I'll leave that up to to my customers. Whoa. Anyway, uh thank you so much for hopping on. Yeah, thanks guys. Good to hear from you. See you. Let me tell you about figma. com. Think bigger, build faster.

Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. You can think about it like your friend for design. Jordan, do you have some breaking news? What's going on? You said whoa. What's that? You said whoa. Oh, he was uh swearing. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, I was trying to I was trying to find like this.