Anonymous founder Signull launches Sky, an agentic AI home screen replacing the static iPhone app grid

in the manufacturing ecosystem for humanoid robot robot bodies. that has been recorded many many times. Well, without further ado, we have Signal here in the TVPN Ultradom. Let's bring in Signal, who is launching Sky, an agentic AI home screen, replacing the iPhone app.

There he is.

With contention driven intelligence,

dude, I can't believe this long. We've reacted to your posts like so many times. So good to have you.

I Oh my god, it's incredible to be on here, guys. Um, welcome. It's been a long time coming, but I just want to start off with saying congratulations.

This has been ridiculous.

Yeah. What a wild.

I've been watching you guys since day zero.

Really? You watched my first episode?

Well, because I think we were covering your post would have been making it into like the first episode

for sure.

You're probably like, "Why are these two guys in suits reading out my tweets? This is

wild." It was um

I I tweeted this out a little bit, but I was like, man, when I read that and you guys were reacting to what I posted because I didn't really think about what I posted and you guys analyzed it and I was like, "Oh my god, this is ridiculous. Holy crap."

Yeah.

What did I even write?

I don't I don't remember. You have a ton of bangers. They're all good posts. We had a great time. That was the lifeblood of the show. It was so much fun. Uh anyway, uh we're not here to talk about uh you know, the the first episode. We're here to talk about your first episode in this new journey. Uh talk to us about what you're launching, what you're

very smooth, John.

I try. I try.

Come a long way for sure.

Anyway, uh introduce yourself a little bit. Introduce the app, introduce the product, where you want this to go. And I have a ton of questions.

No, absolutely. Um, you know, uh, we're I've always been in consumer software and I think there's just not that much other than the sort of main players. Um, I noticed and there's there's a lot to be done and and what a time to be alive. So, you know, we're experimenting at the very basic layer of how to make this stuff uh really easy to use, really easy to access for normal people that have not really come into this agentic AI world in full speed other than sort of chatting

Yeah.

with chat bots and whatnot. And I think it was an it's an early experimentation of what we're up to is kind of how AI will kind of speak to you as well as how you know sort of ambient AI will be in various surfaces. Um starting with your phone, right? Like maybe your phone may not look exactly the same way even in the next couple years. Um, so we're kind of operating at the very earliest stages of experimenting of how AI will communicate with you and we're trying to think of creative surfaces and one of the one of the most interesting places you always, you know, people take out their phones and they glance at it and turns out, you know, this stuff hasn't really changed in such a long time.

The iPhone home screen is 20 years old.

That's two decades.

And it's just static icons. Yeah,

it it roughly speaking it has not really evolved in any one shot. They one shot it.

Yeah, that's the steel man.

The steel man is like it's good. It's the final form.

It's the final form. Some things don't change.

We're all going to We're all going to

We could always do a three-wheel car, five wheel car, six wheel. I mean the thing that I've been the thing that I've been pressing on is like you would think you know if I could rewind

2 3 years I would not expect and and and knowing how much progress there would be in AI I would not expect to look at the top 25 apps in the app store and only see LLMs

like chat apps

I would expect to see like a variet given given just like how many magical experiences people have had a variety of like new products

new Uber new Instagram like and that's like some argument previous app boom that was like very diffuse. You got you got Candy Crush and and uh what's the one with the pigs, the Flappy Bird and uh Angry Birds and like you got all these different apps, Run Keeper and Diet products and it feels like this has really collapsed down into just chat apps.

Yeah. And you know, I actually recently got a new phone and I was installing apps. You know, I always like to set up my phone uh bare like I don't like to transition my phone.

Interestingly the same.

Really? It gives me a little bit of a a reset on not only what I need and what I don't need, but also how to think about software as it exists today. Like I don't want to be tied to what I was before. I want to kind of be a new if you will. And um you know it turns out I installed uh you know GPT and Claude and whatnot and I was like man I don't think I really need that much stuff. You know these LLMs are kind of collapsing um how and what you do into an interesting dynamic. Um and I think generally um they're incredibly powerful and the fact that you know those top five apps are all LLMs roughly is speaks volumes to the zeitgeist and speaks volumes to the impact of the actual technology. Like I don't think you know previous I think technology has always been kind of a little bit more evolutionary than not. Obviously hindsight is 2020 but um but this feels so so different you know as a technologist um this this world feels very different. It feels um just just the things are going to rapidly change from here on out in terms of how people experience their lives, how people interact with each other and how you know we're going to facilitate brand new interactions potentially or you know completely reinvent old ones. So, I'm very excited for that. And I think our company and the way that we think about it from a consumer perspective is just to make things, you know, easily accessible for these individuals. And and I think we we're going to we're going to attempt to do that. Very basic.

What is your like more as like a CEO? I it sounds like you guys have raised a little bit of money and like are just like in an experimental phase. Is that like generally the right read?

I think Yeah, I think generally I would say two things. Number one is look, we've built a really fun product that we're going to give to lots and lots and lots of people. Turns out, you know, this era is nonzero marginal cost. We have raised a little bit of capital. Um, but you know, inferences is non-trivally expensive and especially if you operate at like aentic inference or um just background inference, that stuff is just consistently going unlike, you know, claude or GPT where people actually make requests or go on there and type something. Uh we're we're doing it on behalf of you, right? like we're doing those things in the background where we anticipate, we listen to contacts. We we turn, you know, every time, for example, every time you get an email, uh we process it with one of our agents. It it sort of turns out, it buckets that item. It tries to figure out what to do with it. It tries to see if there's it deserves some higher uh order like ranking and then it tries to figure out, oh, can I complete this task? Can I draft a reply? Oh, maybe it does deserve a reply. let me go back to John and say okay hey here's a reply that I've crafted based on everything I know and it's a very look replying to emails has been you know 30 40 years but this is a new world in terms of how you think about communication and how agents kind of mediate this world and apply that to any you know any aspect of your life whether it's health or finance or where even where you are right like one of the underlying things that we do is location and you know imagine learning about the world around you through an LLM, whether it's through text or voice, by simply it being on your home screen wherever you are. If you're at a museum, if you're in a new neighborhood, and that's a one tap away, like our goal is to make intelligence either zero or one tap away, not one prompt away. So,

burning question,

how do you how do you how do you make this product free so that everyone can use it? Will we see ads on the home screen of the iPhone ad supported? I think ad supported could make sense, right? I'm walking by a coffee shop and I get I get an offer.

Hey, there's ads in Apple Maps now. So, Apple,

you're seeing my notification stream in. So, you you can really you know what I like.

Yeah. Counter position.

I I think the interesting thing here is like you like you guys can operate like you can kind of wake up and ask yourself like what would Apple do if they were like truly excel excited about AI versus like seemingly scared of it. you know, um I've posted about this a little bit with with respect to Apple. Um Apple relies on a deterministic world, right? Like a world where lots and lots of elements from design to the experience to the underlying context that doesn't change as much and it's very deterministic. So for example, iPhone is very much kind of uh software is very broadcasty, right? It's a one to many. They write it once and it runs for everybody and roughly speaking it runs exactly the same way. Now with a non-deterministic world that could change drastically like for example for when we you know give this out to everybody everybody in their everybody has a very different experience with our app because it's completely non-deterministic and Apple lives in a deterministic world and having to transition into non-determinism and non-deterministic software is actually a really non-trivial transition especially for a company like Apple where every single corner or every single thing needs to be tightly controlled. So I think for us we're kind of p paving a path where um we can marry some level of like expectations and determinism with the beauty of non-deterministic uh elements of AI and create a really great user experience around that that lives on your home screen and works for everybody. Um that's how we think about it. So we're kind of maybe in some sense moving ahead of Apple who has to deal with a few billion users, you know, just just minor amount of users. Um, so I think I think that, you know, this this world deserves more experimentation like like we're doing uh in terms of both user interfaces and experiences and feeds and ranking and and Jordy going back to your point on on monetization like I think that's the number one thing that I think about quite drastically. Look, we're trying to capture real estate on your device. That is the home screen that is available at a glance. And you know, I think I posted about

the greatest billboard of all time.

Exactly. I mean, it is it is insanely powerful if we can activate that. No, that's a tall order. But at the same time, you know, like I've I've posted about ads and advertising. Look, I've a I've been in technology for such a long time from consumer, you know, whether it's like feeds at Facebook or, you know, even Google and whatnot. But you know you you sort of think about advertising has done a lot of good for the world. You know it has actually made things accessible and and and and I think generally if advertising has done well it is actually one of the most useful uh economic paradigms in terms of delivering equality and services to people who would have otherwise not been afforded. Um so I believe in advertising. I believe in good advertising. I believe in advertising that is actually like um uh complimentary to the user experience, not necessarily taking away from it. It's tricky to do. Um but

yeah, the worst ad experience I've ever had as as an ad enjoyer was like in college I was buying a Kindle and they were like, "Do you want the ad supported Kindle for like $100 or the ad free Kindle for like $120?"

And as a college student, I was like, "I don't I don't think I'll mind ads." Like, why not? Oh, that's bad.

And it's on the home screen when the device is locked

and they're just showing me books that I would never read all the time.

So, it's terrible targeting. And it's a device that's just like sitting around my house all the time

and it kind of looks like, wait, you're reading that?

Yeah. Yeah.

So, if you can avoid that,

Yeah.

definitely.

There's a question from the chat. Uh, why are you anonymous? Do you plan on continuing to be anonymous? Uh, I mean I I imagine as you grow the business like it would be interesting to stay anonymous forever, but you know at some point a journalist will want to know and I imagine that unless your opsac is super tight it'll come out. Not that it's like bad. I I'm just wondering like how have you processed the anon thing?

That's a great question. you know, my entire online existence as it exists today with respect to this account is is a giant accident because um I was trying to find my old username and password for cuz I just wanted to post a little while ago maybe, you know, whenever I started posting. But I think when you guys actually started started uh TBPN as well and I I think I

Yeah, your account must have gone from like a thousand followers to like

over a hundred within the first few months of of us.

It was kind of nuts. Okay, so the the whole story is, you know, I I um I was kind of uh I was like, you know what, I just want to read. I maybe I'll reply or something. And I had a lot of fun and you know, whenever I'm having fun, I like to double down on things. You know, maybe not change change it around too much. Look, I think certainly this this world is going to change at some point. Um but for in the in the meantime, you know, I love leaning into fun new things. You know, if you want to do anything new in the world, you got to do it a little bit differently. You got to be a little bit more unique. you got to be a little bit more mysterious, a little bit more um yeah, I don't know. All of this stuff is just so wild to me, right? Like the anonymity aspect of it and the ex culture and the anons around it. And you guys have had, you know,

Yeah, you can never dox. I'm sorry. You can never dox. I mean like bangsy bangsy getting unmasked. Is that good for the is that good for the brand? Like like you could be you could be like taller than John Giga Chad.

Everyone just imagine

and it won't be enough, right? We we all picture you as a philosopher king of sorts.

Oh, it's beautiful, isn't it? I mean, my my bio and my phil actual content are like sometimes sometimes the same and sometimes disjoint, but that's I think the beauty of it. So in that realm, you know, like I was actually talking to some people around this and I was like I I I sometimes I basically kind of do what I feel like and right now it's like just been so much fun to to kind of lean in on this world and and it you know, but I think certainly I'm I'm I'm more like I'll I'll I'll marry myself to the zeitgeist, if you will. And if that if that calls that, then I'll I'll I'll continue and we'll see what happens.

Not married to the game. Married to the zeitgeist.

Married to the zeitgeist. Okay. Take me through take me through iOS development uh like current status because this seems like a really good idea that people would want. Uh I do think people are bored of the grid and having something that's more dynamic and agentic makes a ton of sense and I think you could deliver a ton of value but my fear is that Apple's just like no that's our real estate. Uh, so is there a clear path right now through like widgets and the shortcuts API to actually do interesting things or am I going to have to like sideloadad a different OS? Like how how like consumerfriendly and like easy will this be or will you be bumping up against the walled garden of Apple pretty quickly?

Um, that's a really great question. Look, every single thing we do is within the confines of the Apple ecosystem and experience in the way that they've designed and made it work. And we've designed our product to fit almost like a glove in that into that ecosystem. Um, you know, when when you onboard into our experience, you just connect the things in your life that you think are you you would want more. Uh,

the server side connections I totally get like like all of that makes sense. You can like like OOTH with email and use APIs or MCPS. Like there's a million things you can do on the server.

What I'm interested in is like is like how big can the widget be or can you actually take over the whole home screen?

We can we can take over the we basically ask you to install two widgets a medium widget and a large widget that encapsulates the entire home screen and those work in dynamic together. So the the medium widget will basically what we call a wildcard widget internally which shows you precisely what you might need to know at this point in time and then the big widget is what we call a for you widget which is just a a feed and you know what we're doing John I think is we're building kind of the new iteration the the Facebook news feed 2.0 know that's entirely AI generated about your life, highly personal and that lives directly on your home screen and you can browse it as easily. The feed paradigm is so familiar with individuals and the beautiful part is that it's all like AI generated and AI mediated every we have 22 agents that work continuously to generate content for that feed.

It's funny because like everything everything that's fancy I'm like yeah that's easy. And then like getting people to install two widgets. I'm like that's the hard part. And I don't know if I'm right, but like it feels like like like I'm still in like proumer territory, but that's a good place to start. And then you can hopefully make it easier and then maybe Apple opens it up to a point where like you downloaded an app and just by clicking yes, it just installs the widgets by default or something. It it does feel like the the biggest thing is like I just love when like these new surface areas are explored. Uh I mean you you you mentioned Nikita uh but like he's but he's done a great job of really understanding all the different hooks what you can do within iOS uh you know pushing those to the limit creating like new UX new experiences on top of like what Apple gives you and it feels like that's really underexplored. Have you thought of uh

have you thought about built trying to build any products within within any of the LLM ecosystems just given that they they already have an exist you know massive existing user bases? That's a great question and you know I've definitely explored like every single thing with respect to an API or a platform that comes out you know um I you know for example the WWDC APIs that come out every year I uh I read them like like the Bible you know like I would I I I read

um you know that that's my uh that's my uh you know uh religious holiday or whatnot and every

Cook is the pope. He's your post.

Yeah, exactly.

We get it. Yeah.

Um and uh you know, so I scrunched these. I think generally these API the sort of apps or chat GBT apps are it's unclear to me what the incentive structures are for the app developer just yet. And it's unclear to me why applications deserve to exist inside of an LLM just yet besides just adding more context cuz theoretically an LLM is powerful enough to even generate an app to be able to do something in which case I'm not sure exactly unless you bring some highly proprietary data like Zillow or whatnot. Maybe some of these experiences work. But otherwise, I don't know if the small time developer, you guys remember the flashlight apps and the the lighter apps on the iPhone, like you know, you're not really seeing those types of

as a probably 12year-old was the beer app.

The beer app was good.

Just thinking that thinking that that was like that was peak humor.

What about the I'm rich app? That was like $10,000.

It was just it showed a d a picture of a diamond and it was just like you could just open a picture on your phone. But if you bought that app, you could show people that you just wasted 10K on a iPhone app or whatever. I think it literally maxed out. It was the most expensive app you could possibly like type into the app store.

I think the guy sold like over 500 copies before Apple removed it for no not foring real person. So I think he he made 500 times $1,000 and it was incredible. See, these are the kinds of experiments and creative elements that, you know, I think deserve to exist in the world today. And I think, you know, we're a few handful of individuals that are kind of trying to make that happen. And we're trying to be really creative, really fun, really interesting, engaging. Um, and AI is a super pl uh tool to be able to do that. More powerful than the original iPhone APIs. Like, holy crap. So, I think we're we're we're early, but we're going to try.

It's a dream. like like there's so much like

you're doing this you're doing this the right way because there's another scenario where like you could raise a series A right now like or like you know

you have a team you have technology and and the weight list like you'll be able to test things and experiment and learn like there's so much opportunity. What what an exciting time thank you so much for joining the show.

This is great.

Thanks a lot guys.

Great to finally have you on and congrats again. And maybe next time we'll talk about hot takes

for sure.

Oh yeah. What do you think about this AI powered cannabis vape with blockchain rewards?

I'll have to do

I'll have to So John was John showed me like a screenshot. He was showing the website for this this morning and I didn't realize today is 420. So that's what like this is like a 420 joke.

Is it a joke though? I think it's a real website. Like I think it's

Yeah. Yeah. John, you can make a joke website. Did you know that?

I know. I know. But I I I

John Claw design, man. Claw design. You can do anything. Okay. So, you're telling me if I put this in the Wayback Machine and it shows up uh as of yesterday, it's not a joke because I bet you this existed yesterday. Let's see.

Let's see.

Let's see.

I bet you if they were planning to make a

April April 6th, it's in the It's in the Wayback Machine. What does it say? It says, let's see. It's loading. It's got blockchain still. I think these are hustlers who have been just tacking on every single possible trend to go as viral as possible. I don't know. We'll have to dig into it. Well, thank you so much for joining the show, Signal. Fantastic news and congratulations on the progress. Have fun

and we'll talk to you soon.

Cheers.

Have a good one. Uh, up next we have Ethan Ding from TexQL. He is the co-founder and CEO here to