Replika founder Eugenia Kuyda launches Wabi — a 'YouTube for mini apps' where anyone can create, discover, and share personal software

What's going on? Just a new co-founder. No, you're supposed to struggling founder. Yeah. Yeah. Still a struggling founder. Uh, tell us about the new about the new company. We just announced today our um the round we did with the preset round we did for Wabby. Yes. Our new company.

So, time to announce the uh new company as well. So, we're building Wabby, which is uh a personal software platform. Think of it as an app where you can uh discover, quickly, remix, or even create personal mini apps for your daily life. Okay. So, uh yeah, walk me through.

I mean, I I've I've created personal miniature apps with, you know, vibe coding platforms or, you know, coding agents. Kind of run them on my computer. usually try and have them all self-contained in HTML or something. Um, how are you thinking about the actual interaction?

Is this is this like prompt to product, self-hosted, hosted within Wabby? Like like what are all the different trade-offs because there's so many different ways that you could instantiate that ID, I imagine. So, think of it as a YouTube for mini apps.

Um, so all Wabby mini apps compared to most app builders, they all only live on Wabby. You cannot download them. You cannot put them on the app store. You have to use the Moabi. Yep.

But that comes with a lot of benefits because first of all um the social graph discovery uh you can like comment see who your friends are using uh is using what app uh re see remixes follow good creators or creators you like and so on.

You can use apps with your friends and then uh on top of that of course all integrations are included. you can immediately connect um your Gmail account, your calendar location.

We're building our plan is to build 50 integrations before the end of the year um of all sorts and so on and of course you know uh persistent backend uh data security and privacy everything is sort of on Wabby side because if you think about it even if you build a great app on one of the with one of VIP coding tools and send me a link if it's like an AI therapist app I don't know if I'm going to fully trust to use this because I don't know where the logs are going even if you're a good friend and you don't mean anything bad.

You're not a professional developer. What if you forget to pay for the hosting of this app or what if something, you know, leaks? We've already had some of these vi coding apps reach the top of the app store like that teabag app. I don't know if you saw saw that that leak, I think. So, yeah. Was that the T dating? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That one's been very popular. Um, so talk to me about the technical uh like hurdle here. It feels like the app store doesn't necessarily love apps in app stores. Is this a is this a beneficiary of the new regulation around allowing app stores in the iOS app store? Is that a unique unlock?

So, we're not building apps. Um we don't call them apps even. Um these are mini apps. So, think of it as like this small very lightweight workflow. Some of them just like it's almost like a lightweight UI on a prompt. Yeah.

for example, uh a simple mini app that turns your photos to like Polaroids from different decades. Yeah. And so the app store allows many apps and we're not planning to or we're not we're never going to be about like building full-fledged apps or downloading them or anything like that. Yeah, it is interesting.

It feels like Apple will sort of have to grapple with the idea of instantiating UI or mini apps on the fly because for a long time the app store review process has been very much like we want to review all the code and if you are changing the code within the app or the functionality of the app once it's already shipped and approved uh Apple has kind of dealt with that in a very in a in a in a wide variety of ways.

Um but I but I love the I love the idea. So let's just let's just stick to um you know the actual uh technical side of things like are you able are are these apps built in basically like HTML windows that are then served within or or can you actually instantiate like react native or you know like objective C on the fly?

These are React. So all of our mini apps are React Native. Um and then Wabby the platform of course is the um iOS native swift um cool code. So yeah yeah I think sort of similarly to replica what was the the the native app and um a unity container inside of it.

Yeah here the same I feel like we're always going to be about like blending the two technologies together and struggling constantly with how do you merge these two things together. What uh what do you think what do you expect to drive the most usage?

Uh obviously it's early uh it's hard to predict with consumer but do you expect it to be people coming on board just playing around creating things and people are coming to the app to have this sort of creative experience like they might go on Sunno and just start making music they might go on Wabby just start making uh apps and sharing them with their friends etc.

Or do you believe it'll be like more of a hits driven business where there's one or two mini apps that you know develop some uh organic virality themselves that really become the the the driver of real downloads. I think really we are going to be looking at two big categories. More uh retentive utilities.

Think trackers, uh things that you might use with um your family, your friends, yourself, um learning, um all sorts of like to-do list, things that kind of like little workflows for daily life.

And then more viral uh personalized mirrors or like viral prompts for image and not only um for example like something that I really liked uh um on Wabi was this mini app that takes in your Gmail and builds an action figure based on the information from your Gmail or like the same but but the same but based on your uh bank activity through um looking at your bank account.

So, just stuff like that where people always want to see some cool stuff like that. Uh, brag about themselves, uh, share, and it's almost like a one-time use thing. You're not going to be coming back to for that. But at the same time, if that was a an app on the app store, like that's kind of too much.

You'd need to download it. It's like it's too much. But here, it's just like this little mini app thing that lives inside Wabby. You can try it. There's no cost to it. What about uh apps as memes or just purely for entertainment? Do you expect that to be kind of a category of of itself?

Like this kind of idea of we can now make a mini app that's really just meant to be kind of funny and make people laugh, but then it doesn't have to necessarily be durable or it doesn't have to be a standalone business itself. 100%. I think we're entering this era where apps uh where software is not going to be set.

It's not going to be just this static this the app I created and you know you use it and you can't do anything with that. Instead it's going to be this ultra personalized very malible um very lightweight software that can change that is uh truly built on the platform of you.

I would think that kind of the operating system of the future is the one where you'll have a few apps, big apps like you know the Tik Toks, the Instagrams of course that will always exist. Uh and then there may be a few apps built by the community that you discovered. Maybe some of them you remixed a little bit.

Maybe some you actually built yourselves yourself and then there going to be some mini apps built for you by AI. Like for example, if I'm going to New York next week, it should Wobbby should go through your email and suggest an app, pre-build an app for you. Hey, I know you're into art. You're going to New York.

Here's an app that basically recommends art shows around your Airbnb for that time. That's really cool.

I feel like I feel like this is a product that uh once people have that that like people will have a moment where they're like, "Wait, why did I I mean the the idea that you could go on a trip and generate an app that was almost like some quasi uh even just tracker for your trip of like, oh, these are all the things I want to do and check them off and then you could make so many other layers that you can you can build on on on top of it.

" Uh, how much are you what what do WABI like how much do you feel like you'll need to incentivize creators on the platform early on? Like would you ever create like some type of like creator fund to incentivize people to come on and and experiment?

I mean, a lot of big social media platforms have have done this over the years. Uh, you guys have raised quite a bit of cash, so I'm sure you could soft circle some of it, but maybe you don't need to at all. curious how you're thinking about it. I think you're you're uh going the right direction.

That's what we're also thinking about. How do we incentivize the best creators to create the best apps out there? And what really struck me um the other day was that actually it's easier to create a cool mini app than it is to create a YouTube video, a great YouTube video.

It doesn't require that um that much production uh in a sense. Like for example, even yesterday I was just I was putting my daughter down um and it was bedtime. She likes to play these puzzles where I I give her a puzzle and she tries to guess what it is. So we we wanted to just find something online for it.

But it took me it was a lot faster. It only took me a minute on Wabby to build this simple mini app where basically is a puzzle and then just four pictures that you can click on. And because she's into Princess Elsa, we made it princess Princess Elsa themed.

And because she goes to Italian preschool, we made it uh in Italian. And so it literally took us like a couple minutes and it it was like co-creation. We're creating that app together with her. Um so think of it as like Roblox meets personal software in a sense.

Um so I do think to a degree right now it's be it's almost becoming easier to create something than even to search for it online. Yeah, we we got to hang out with the CEO of Roblox yesterday and I think he's coming on the show tomorrow.

How much uh how much do you think it can be dangerous to be like too inspired by in this case like something like a Roblox? Because in in so many ways I can imagine that you know an economy forms around Wabby in the same way that it has around uh in the same way that it has around Roblox.

Uh there's so many different ways you can kind of draw comps, but sometimes it can be a trap to be too inspired by something because ultimately it's a different, you know, totally different kind of use case and and value uh than than than maybe uh Roblox has. I mean, our vision is different.

Our our mission is to set software free.

And I think uh kind of the main main inspiration for Wabby was that idea that we live in the Microsoft DOSs era of AI interfaces and the gooey um moment for AI is around the corner and we do believe that with this almost like godlike technology that we created, it will require uh a different type of uh an interface.

There will be the Windows, the Mac OS for for AI. we're not going to be using um AI through a command line forever. Um and so I think this is kind of where our northstar is. It's like how how can we create a different interface for everyone to tap into all the capabilities of these AI models.

Yeah, it's going to be really fun. I I I feel like uh we we we can sit here and predict how things will play out, but we should just have you back on once you have real data on how people are using it, how much is entertainment, how much is productivity.

uh what the top apps are and kind of how the how the community like takes shape because uh I imagine there's only so much that you can predict once you build a tool, you know, if you ask Yeah, that's the thing with Roblox.

It's like how did how how would Roblox predict that grow a garden would be the most popular game in the world teenagers. Yeah. Or like a full reenactment of Call of Duty in Roblox. Like that was probably not on the road map from day one. That's the beautiful thing about uh starting these like these platforms.

But uh congratulations on the round. Uh what what's the what's the wait list timing? I'm on the wait list now. When when when are when the strategy around opening it up? Soon. We're we're building a few really um exciting things. Uh right now working on multiplayer as we speak. Yeah.

I think the one of the really cool things about Wabby is that um is going to be that all apps come with multiplayer included. Uh and even just simple mini apps like for example I built a Wordle game uh to test it with my mom so that we can play together.

Obviously we played on the New York Times but it's pretty much like our ways way to connect with each other and with Wabby we do have a leaderboard and um you know we can see who's beating each who's better today who's doing better. We can get set up these notifications and all that.

So, um, a few things that we want to build before we, uh, roll it out to general audience, but we're we're getting fantastic feedback from our first users, and it's honestly really exciting to again to be in that zero to one stage. I I'm so excited about this. Amazing.

Well, as soon as we have access, we're going to have Tyler make uh, build some stuff. Something like six or seven mini apps. [laughter] Well, send them to me. Thank you so much. We will uh great catching up. I'm I'm excited.

Yeah, we're excited you're growing 0 to1 again and and uh super excited about WBI and uh this is really cool. Uh we'll uh we'll talk soon. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great rest of your day. Cheers. Bye. Uh before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about Bezel.

Your bezel concier is available now to source you any watch on the planet. We this morning, we're not going to dox him, but we ran into a uh a founder uh founder we like who had quite a nice IPO a few years ago and we did do a risk check. He performed. He uh it was it was great to see. Yes.

Um well, at the cover of the Wall Street Journal, there's a bidding war for obesity startups. Did you hear about this? Fizer and Novon Nordisk boost their bids in an unusual fight for Metsera. I feel like when you say obesity startups, it's going to be the the Wiguvi white labelers.

And I was imagining this would go like Hims Roman like that crew. Uh but apparently uh they are all fighting over the developer of the obesity drug. It's called Metsera. The latest twist in their unusual fight over the startup.

Metsa said t Tuesday that Novo Nordisk's proposed proposal values the biotech company at up to 8620 a share uh or approximately $10 billion up from its previous bid of 9 billion. So they're going back and forth.

The valuation represents an approximately 159% premium to Mitser's closing price on September 19th, the last trading day before the Fizer deal was disclosed. So Fiser's new offer values shares at up to 70 bill $70 a share was 8. 1 billion. Fizer had previously struck a deal at 7. 3 billion. They're going back and forth.

Um the duel between two of the world's biggest drug makers over a three-year-old company, three-year-old company with just with just more than a 100 employees and no approved drugs. Wow. Shows the importance of weight loss drugs to the pharmaceutical industry.

Weight loss is one of the hottest categories in prescription drugs and companies big I imagine and small um big and small have been lining up to be part of the market with with uh leaders Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

The global market for the drugs is now worth 72 billion according to TD Cowan which projects it will reach 139 billion in 2030. It's always so funny because I'm like, "Oh, 72 billion, Tyler. Is 72 billion dollars a lot? " [laughter] No, wait. Like, you mean what Google's spending on capex just this year?

Like, that's just what just what one hyperscaler is spending on capex is the entire weight loss market. Big tech is pretty big. Well, we have our next guest. The There he is. What's up, guys? How you doing? Great. Welcome to the show. Great transition. I just slid in there. Fantastic. We're [laughter] doing well.