RealmIQ: SESSIONS

RealmIQ: SESSIONS with DMA Anderson

Curt Doty Season 2 Episode 13

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FULL INTERVIEW: In this episode of the "Realm IQ Sessions" podcast, Curt Doty interviews DMA Anderson, founder and CEO of Korgi, an AI-powered productivity and collaboration tool. Anderson shares her extensive background in TV production, technology entrepreneurship, and consultancy, discussing her journey in creating Korgi. The conversation covers the challenges and insights that led to the development of Korgi, the tool's unique features, its impact on productivity, and the ethical considerations of AI. The discussion also touches on the broader implications of AI in various industries, particularly in entertainment, and the importance of focusing on solving specific problems for customers.

Topics Covered

  1. Introduction to DMA Anderson and her background
  2. Origin and development of Korgi
  3. The concept of "toggle tax" and productivity tools
  4. Security, privacy, and data management in Korgi
  5. Role of AI in Korgi and its impact on productivity
  6. The ethical implications of AI, especially in the entertainment industry
  7. Coaching and career development using AI
  8. Vertical SaaS and focused product development
  9. Bootstrapping and funding strategies for startups
  10. Encouragement for founders to focus on specific problems and customer needs

Quotes

·  DMA Anderson: "We're giving people time, not little, tiny fragments of time. We're giving you huge chunks of time."

·  DMA Anderson: "AI is like a jazz musician with ones and zeros."

·  Curt Doty: "You have to think about how do I want to organize my information."

·  DMA Anderson: "We're not here to build a tool; we're here to build a solution."

·  Curt Doty: "It's a mistake that founders often make when they want to launch. They want to boil the ocean."

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One on One AI Coaching with Curt Doty

Hi, I’m Curt Doty from RealmIQ and this is our podcast, Realm IQ Sessions, where we talk about everything AI with AI leaders from around the world. Please give us a follow or subscribe. Today's guest is DMA Anderson, founder and CEO of Korgi. She's a veteran TV producer and executive multi-patented tech entrepreneur and multi sector strategic consultant.

 

She has helmed top rated programming for CBS, Bravo, A&E, TLC, and more. Authored two entertainment books that are taught in media programs nationwide. Written, produced and show run over 100 hours of television and served as an executive for Lee Daniels Entertainment, Walt Disney Television and BET. She has also most recently launched Corgi, an AI fueled, all in one productivity and collaboration tool that integrates Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 apps.

 

She's a graduate with distinction at Stanford University and is a career long member. Of the television academy and producer’s guild of America and American Mensa. So, I am so honored to have you and welcome and let's get into it. I think I covered a lot in that intro but anything you want to add, or we can just jump right into AI and Corgi. 

 

Oh, let's jump right in. Definitely. Thanks for having me. Sure. So why don't you tell me the origins of, and timing around why you thought Corgi was a much-needed tool and how did you arrive at that insight and what's your background in, in terms of starting this company? Sure. Well, Corgi is my first. The fourth commercialized app and my first two back in 2007 and 2008 already, the cloud was just emerging, and I was doing everything I could to take specific verticals, the entertainment industry production space, the education college access space and consolidate and centralize just the wild array of content and tools and conversations that you have to have access to.

 

In order to get things done and are scattered across so many different apps. And back then wrote down like this wish list. Wouldn't it be great if there were, you know, a productivity tool, I'm sure I didn't call it a productivity tool in 2007, but if I, if there were some kinds of app that would just let me do this for my life.

 

And I ended up specking out something I called life. That, you know, I kept thinking how much easier it would have been to create this. If I had had. This tool and that tool. And then fast forward many years later. Obviously, it's been more than 15 years since that. And I've been an executive for a long time and consulting as a strategist in very different spaces across all the sectors.

 

And I kept once again coming up with these extremely bespoke tech solutions for my clients, because once you've gotten folks on a path, whether you're Helping them with leadership or helping them with, with team building or trying to get a project, you know, out of the door or course corrected. I was always nerding out and trying to build something specific and helpful for them.

 

And some point now, gosh, two years ago, I was saying, I wish I had, you know, this version of this for myself. I had this HR tool I built five years ago that I licensed currently still to, uh, an entertainment company. And the final piece of that was that all of their data was, was stored on prem using this tool instead of in the cloud.

 

And so, I sat down, and I said, I think this is the next app. I think I have to do something quite general market that does those three things. It kills the toggle tax. I first heard that from HBR, but the fact that you spend many, many, many hours a day jumping back and forth between tabs and apps and windows.

 

So, I asked, what can I do to have a single place that I'm operating from where my tools are, and I can use the tools where my content is, and I can create more content where my conversations are and more. Then the second piece was, and can I please just live in the drives I am already using all day, which for OneDrive.

 

So Korgi became this beautiful home based Where I could just start and end each day and work from one or two tabs. And it's just been life changing. We built Korgi using Corgi. It was incredible. Awesome. I had to quote the boomtown rats here and say, I don't like Mondays. I have used Slack quite a bit. 

 

And you're, you know, now providing this platform.  That I should have sure could have used the last few years since I've managed teams and I understand the problem that you've solved essentially, and you've shown me the interface and the experience. And I have to say it's very seamless. And I love the fact that you realized early on that you didn't need to go enterprise with your solution.

 

You tapped into big tech. To solve some of these basic problems that you harnessed it in a way that had never been achieved before. And so, kudos to you. Can you, can you describe what that was like and how long that took to create your partnerships? Well, that is still happening. I think when we made the decision to build on top of Google drive and, and Google workspace, and then we, we Added in Microsoft 365 for folks like me who straddle both worlds, then, you know, we are B2B.

 

We are starting with small business. We will ultimately sell to enterprise and there is a level of security, privacy and compliance that you that you have to be able to have a conversation around. And if I'm coming in and connecting to a company's Google Workspace, then that was a tiered experience for us.

 

First, obviously, we are tied into every possible API that Google offers. And so, you have to go through getting, you know, those API permissions, you know, that and, and OAuth and, you know, having your scopes approved by Google. And that is a very deeply, but not clearly documented process. And one of the things I'm a nerd.

 

So, I'm excited to do is to, to kind of write some very clear, you know, posts. I don't know, an indie hacker or somewhere that will allow me to explain The, oh, they left out this piece or you really will be faster if you do this that I've been documenting as I go. So, it took some time to navigate getting through OAuth and scopes.

 

We are using sensitive and even restrictive scopes as far as Google classifies access to the APIs. And so, then we had to go through a fairly intense level of security assessment. Which we then passed. So that was when we were able to really say at minimum to launch, we can go out to consumers and small businesses and say, we have passed, you know, security.

 

But we then kept going and became Google cloud partners. That's the point at which right, literally right now, that was just a couple of weeks ago, I felt, okay, now we can have enterprise conversations. Awesome. Okay. So, you think about security, we'll get, we'll get around to AI. Uh, the, uh, obviously a big tech.

 

Has been a culprit in exploiting data sets, building data sets that are not ethically sourced. So, are your customers and their information and history and using your platform, is their data safe from big tech and learning off of your data set? Well, here's the easy answer. We built on top of Google. So that people's information would stay on the platform that they've already decided to trust.

 

So, what they're creating with Korgi boards, all of the information that they're putting onto the boards and all of the files that they're creating with the integrated apps is being created on top of with and stored in Google drive. So, Google workspace. And separately, Microsoft 365, we're also Microsoft AI business partners.

 

Everything you're creating with those tools, you're only using Corgi as this really delightful, beautiful front end. That magically organizes all of this, so we, we're doing a lot of heavy lifting, but we are not trying to store all of your sensitive data, you already decided that you trusted Microsoft and or Google to do that.

 

We're giving you a way to keep that as your solution but manage all of their information and more in a far easier and simpler and speedier way. Okay, cool. Great answer. Now let's get into AI. So, I believe you launched after chat GPT had launched. And so, tell me about that process and what are the aspects of AI, which is a big word means many things.

 

Are you, are you using. To, to make, you know, Corgi essentially an AI platform. Sure. Well, with apologies to the more AI advanced listeners, I always like to set up a very tiny explanation. There's, there hasn't been this sudden burst of AI in the world. What chat GPT and now copilot Gemini, which is obviously, you know, integrated into our kind of Google first platform that didn't just happen with, you know, last year, what happened last year, we're facing tools for generative AI, but for decades, you know, AI has been around.

 

And for the modern times, when you think about kind of, if I generally say three types of AI. Predictive AI has been part of our world for many years. That's AI that looks at our behaviors and predicts what we might want to see or do next. So, every time you look at your phone, you know, at any music app, or you're looking at any, you know, the television or film app, and they're saying you might like, or Amazon is suggesting things to shop to you.

 

That's not because they've been, well, they actually have been hanging out listening to you, depending on what devices are in your house. It's deeply because their AI has been trained on your behavior, and they're using predictive AI to keep, you know, same thing with the news feed and your social media feed.

 

This is going to appeal to you. Prescriptive AI, which I always think of in terms of like the health care uses of that, that can take a look at a whole bunch of historical data, consume it, analyze it and come back and tell professionals, hey, this might be, you know, what's causing this illness, or this might be a way to treat this issue.

 

So, when we're in our industry and entertainment talking about AI, we're almost always talking about generative AI, another form of AI that's consuming all of this information. And rather than just regurgitating it back, which it can do, it's also being trained to be able to analyze it, build, I like to say, riff on top of it.

 

AI is like a jazz musician with ones and zeros, right? And that is the piece that is at the heart of a lot of concern and excitement in the entertainment industry. When we think of generative AI, we think about AI is making movies without people, AI, that was corny, AI is going to, you know, read through all or scan through all of the art and photography in the world and is now generating kind of versions of other people's IP.

 

So those are the conversations at the heart of what we're talking about. What inspired me? With Corgi, I'll say it in three phases, certainly when I'm developing a product and you're the CEO, right? You're the person who is making all the conversations. You're trying to have trusted advisors around you, a bunch of other founders who can have conversations with, but because it's consumed so much of the world's data, however, we feel about the way in which that was done without advising.

 

The controllers of that IP or compensating them in many instances that consumption of data and ability to analyze and riff off of it means that when I am thinking about not content, but processes.  There is an artificially Intel, an artificial intelligence advisor I can lean on. If I want to come back and say, oh, I'm thinking about, you know, things that really distinguish us from our competitors, you know, I can literally list the competitors and say, give me, you know, three of their strongest, you know, you know, talking points.

 

And, and that is an incredible thing to be able to do without having to know someone to have a conversation around, or being able to upload, you know,  Around a presentation you might be doing for a picture for a client and have them analyze it and come back and say, you know, you've left out, you know, talking about your, you know, the, the advantages of this particular distinction.

 

So, there's something quite extraordinary about having that level of trained information. To be able to engage with at that level of natural language queries and responses. So, as I was even thinking about that, that was one of the first things before we even got into the tech, what an advantage it was to be doing this in a time where this additional information existed.

 

Yes, and that, uh, result and feature set from certainly ChatGPT and many other platforms is often overlooked for movies, AI imagery, copyright infringement, certainly deepfakes and cloning and, you know, all those things have to do with the visual side. Right. And you're talking about the data side, and which has rapidly become the fastest growing tool for marketers and consultants and companies, right?

 

It's the tax, the data results, the summaries, all these things, which are just very useful tools. And one, I didn't see any robots in the process and no jobs were displaced really, and, and, and no copyright infringement because I'm not dealing with pictures and doing those types of queries.  So, I think that the Hollywood conversation, and we both come from Hollywood, I think the Hollywood conversation has really stalled the adoption of AI because it's dealt with the visual side and, and the controversies and lawsuits around that.

 

Some very justified, they're going to get worked out and courts, but in the meantime, there’s been all this, uh, progress made and, and businesses globally have adopted it.  Hollywood's been a little slower based on union contracts, lawsuits. There is Silverman,  Scar-jo, right? All these sensational star driven lawsuits and controversies has created this fear, kind of paralysis in Hollywood, I feel.

 

And I think, and a good deal of anger, you know. I think that, that part of that is when, when we think of creativity as this uniquely human experience. You know, just, you know, elephants can paint. I'm not sure if it's completely true, but I know for sure in our industry that your ability to create is, is the currency of your career and the thought that not only might you be displaced, but also that your prior work could be used to train.

 

The thing that's going to displace you, right? That is, that is sobering. I think another reason for our industry that, that it hasn't necessarily adopted at the level it could is because so much of the focus on tools, on people who are out here creating, or at least in the messaging that comes my way in this side of the, the, of the, of the industry, is focused on generative AI, even though people are saying, that's not really what I want.

 

And so, part of why in all of our entertainment, you know, we're, we're launching entertainment. This is the world I know and education. And part of, of the work I'm doing is, is showing them, this is how AI is not only not going to displace you. What's going to elevate you is going to make you work faster is going to address all of these cuts and you've lost staff members or team members or it's just you and I can add hours if not in some of our user feedback half a day.

 

To your productivity because there's a tool that is going to both manually and virtually do a lot of lifting for you that you're used to having to do yourself. And I love that position. It's, it's supercharging oneself in any type of industry. And we know that with the Studio consolidation, reduced budgets for television shows and movies.

 

These are the realities that are happening. And so, there's a large population of people in entertainment that still want to work and keep their livelihoods going. When they were affected drastically by this. The strike, let alone COVID, but the bounce back hasn't really happened. And, and now with all this consolidation and impending layoffs and, you know, it's, it's not helping, but what you're doing is saying, I love this is it's a positive message to those people still in entertainment, worried about how do I.

 

Make myself more valuable in this industry that's going through a contraction, right? And how do I see myself differently than I've seen myself? I do a lot of coaching for upper-level executives. It's, it's something that I'm very passionate about. And I'm again, a nerd. So, I love to solve problems. And if you are an upper-level executive, you're You have a problem right now.

 

You, you are in many, many spaces going to be ushered out the door because of your cost, because of your age, right? And some, in some instances, because you aren't as familiar with all of the tech and kind of the daily tech that drives. Efficiencies in companies. So, on the one hand, how do we try and ensure that you are on top of things that you are viable in this marketplace and can stay, you know, employed and elevated, but on the other hand, one of my favorite things to do is to say, we're going to use a combination of coaching and AI, we're going to ingest your absurd resume, right? We're going to take this, your 15-page LinkedIn, we're going to ingest it. And we're going to start asking questions of it that are expanding. And, and I, I can't describe to you the feeling at the end of every one of these calls that I do, when people start seeing not just, oh, AI is cool.

 

That's not the goal, but oh my goodness. There are all these other things I could be looking at. There are all these other things I could be doing. And there's a blueprint to do them. And, and certainly in the current use of AI, because we obviously are using Corgi to do this. I want people to have all of those searches and their bio drafts and their resumes and their to dos and, and their links and the articles they're reading.

 

I want all of that in a beautiful, easy, accessible place. But we also have an AI assistant built right into the board. So. While you're doing the to dos that you don't have to leave the board for, you can be asking Corgi AI a lot of questions that you can then answer, have answers and start acting on and planning for.

 

And so in the current iteration of the board, that's what's the most exciting piece. It is absolutely, you know, our, our top. Tool people and people using corgi AI and people saying they had never ever used an AI system before. They had heard of, obviously of chat GPT. So, you know, copilot Gemini perplexity, but they, they don't have accounts.

 

They didn't understand what it was for. They, they're feeling, you know, a certain kind of way about how it came to be and how it's being used, but they hadn't thought of being able to ask it questions, you know, like, what are three conferences that I might speak at, given, you know, these, you know, these credentials in my resume, or for, you know, Folks are going through the college application process, you know, what, what are, you know, five things that I can do related to soccer at such and such a school?

 

Well, there's no one you can ask those questions of really. And AI does create this global conversation in the same way search, you know, and social media created global experiences. For the few, For the future, we have templates. We have these massive templates and they're geared towards the same thing.

 

How do I do what I either don't know how to do or what I'm tired of doing manually in such a ridiculous way. And it's certainly when we're talking about. I come out of, you know, dev current production, all of those massive spreadsheets and workbooks that we port with us from show to show and the checklist, and here's all the documents to have something that is built for you, that you could personalize, that has, you know, cards and suggestions.

 

You may not have thought of with AI right there to assist you, little delicious AI integrations that. Make things easier. I, as I showed you, if you have a date on your card and you click the card to turn it into a Google calendar event or an Outlook calendar event, AI is going to take that date for you and pass it through to the calendar.

 

That's a tiny lift, but over the course of that day, all of those little, tiny lifts, all of that integration saves you time. Oh, yeah. Well, and frustration. I mean, the integration factor loan is that, you know, I manage many different email accounts. I managed many social media accounts and I'll have different calendars.

 

And my gosh, I'm a consultant like you. So, it’s hard to manage and, and there isn't any elegant solution, but what you're saying is, no, use Corgi and be less frustrated and simplify your life and find extra time so that you can conquer other things that you hadn't even imagined before. Is that a good summary?

 

Yes. That is our gift. We're giving people time, not little, tiny fragments of time. We're giving you huge chunks of time. And we did a series of interviews with our super users a few weeks ago because we're a few months old. We're still pups, but we're a few months old and you always want to be in conversation with your users.

 

Right. Make sure. All right. Not just around bugs and, you know, features but around what is the actual value proposition. I know why we built it. I know what our users in beta were telling us then, but the user base has changed and diversified so, so, so greatly. And so that's. What came back that brought me joy, that initial intention killed it.

 

The toggle tax. Absolutely. But they're not framing it as I get to close tabs. Now, you know, I don't have so many windows open. That's the actual thing. They're framing it as you're giving me back my time insanity. I'm not dreading opening my computer at the beginning of the day, I open my board, I leave it open and that is, I mean, we have so, we have a lot more features coming and integrating with workspace and certainly, you know, leveraging AI more, but.

 

That's what I was shooting for. I want to change the way people organize and manage and experience their days. That's how blue a sky I am looking at. It's there's so much more than just a board. Yeah. And being a founder, I'm sure you've had challenges in how to, how to raise money, how to The Venture was funded.

 

Can you talk about that journey? To be really fair, I'm fully bootstrapped. And one of the gifts of having been a long-time entertainment professional and have licensed technology is that I was able to build my, you know, I build all of my MVPs. In some instances, like my current license tax, I've also built the final product.

 

But I learned now three years ago that there are a bunch of 20 something year old, just geniuses out there that, you know, can code in any possible language across any possible platform. And so, build out those functional specs. And then I bring in a team. I have such an extraordinary, small, but mighty, brilliant team.

 

And just being able to pay for stuff and being able to do it really smartly and because I understand the technology, it is a gift. Because technically I am a non-technical founder. I didn't do any of the, of the, the code, but I'm, I am the person who spec'd everything out and I do, you know, lead our dev.

 

And that is very helpful when you're trying to keep costs down. There's a lot less exploration that other folks are doing, because I have a very clear idea of, of how we're going to approach it. What's the logic I want to use. What's the, and I also have really smart devs who have very, very smart Strong opinions and it is, it's hard to get off of calls with them because I love peeking out.

 

That's great. Now, we were just, uh, recently on a panel at Digital Hollywood. Mm-Hmm., I moderated it, and you were a panelist and we talked about vertical SaaS and, uh, to me that's about focusing your MVP and product offering. Can you speak a little bit about that? Because that was a, a, it was a great topic and I think it's very important for other founders and AI founders who might be listening to understand. 

 

That aspect of what is a vertical SaaS and how have you implemented that ideology and focus into your product development? Sure. So certainly, my approach to it, I'm lean, I'm a design thinker. I'm all of those nerdy, snobbery things. The first thing I always say and certainly apply to myself is I'm not here to build a tool.

 

I'm here to build a solution. You know, tools or products are about what I want to do. And I want to think solutions are about what am I solving for someone else, someone I care deeply about, even though they're complete strangers. And a lot of times those are folks who I have been, you know, on the same journey as they have.

 

And so that first decision that you're making is I have to be a customer focused company. And that's not just service. That is an intent. I am here to solve a problem for this customer. Thank you. And then the second thing you have to do, and this is painful, is say, and which is that which customer is that?

 

And so, I've always been solving for extremely specific industries, right? This is a college access solution for college advisors, right? This is a Production scheduling, budgeting, and cashflow software for line producers and production managers. Right. And more recently, you know, this is an HR app for talent acquisitions and recruiters’ specialists.

 

Right. So, so if you think already in terms of that delicious specificity, then the vertical SAS challenge isn't what's my, what's, what's my little, tiny narrow definition of an environment. It's the, where are the, where do I go from here? I've solved this now, how am I going to stay in this same environmental lane and come up with more product and solutions that I'm going to be able to monetize.

 

So, I can grow this company. I was on the other side of this. This was the first time I had built something that was clearly a general market tool. And I knew it was a general market tool. And then when we launched and, you know, initially just consumers were finding us and the range of professions that were coming in, it was like, ah, this isn't really, it's a great general market tool.

 

But I'm a bootstrapped founder, general market tools need ad dollars. They need to be able to blast you the general market. I do not have that. I didn't have that delightful. I had a delightful enough career to pay to develop an enormous enterprise level software. If I didn't have, I'm going to advertise, you know, 40 times a day across local networks.

 

So, when you have a general market tool, which many of us as founders believe we have, then deciding to become a vertical SaaS is important. If you are trying to shop to B2B to enterprise and certainly get funded, it's very difficult to get funded in general market right now as a SaaS product. And so, for me, this was the logic of saying I have to be a vertical SaaS to make any sense the investor or the, or the marketplace and the investor or the business marketplace.

 

And so how do I arrive at where I'm going to start? And I had two main decisions. Corgi because of our templates and because we're built on Google workspace. Integrated with Microsoft 365.  One of those, or now two of those templates are around the college application cycle. And there is literally no solution for what we have solved for with Korgi.

 

So that is very enticing to say, I have solved a problem that there is no current solution for. There's this huge gap between all of the tools that let you list the schools that you want to apply to and let advisors track where you've applied and letting you track, okay, here's the responses. But the actual completion of the college application is.

 

A beast and people are still solving it with Google worksheets and texts and, you know, sending essay docs to teachers and counselors. Like it's, it's, it's a mess.  So, there was this beautiful opportunity to be a solution that no one else had.  Then on the other side of that, and I have a lot of experience and expertise and relationships over here, but on the other side was entertainment, where I have, you know, a 20 plus year career.

 

You know, enterprise level relationships in an extraordinary amount of experience, specifically solving for issues around efficiency at all levels of our creative process.  And there was a clear pathway, both to small business and enterprise. And so, at some point when you're launching, you're doing all of this work around your ideal customer profile, right?

 

That ICP and everything is based on that. Your marketing is going to be based on that. Your sales are going to be based on that. Otherwise, the world is too vast. And so, I had to make the decision. You know, honestly, based on spreadsheets and, and conversations with advisors of where the biggest opportunity for my company was going to be to solve those problems and to scale and grow vertically inside.

 

Of an industry and so as a as a first year as a launching company that ICP absolutely is around entertainment teams, predominantly creative and production teams folks that are actually in the thick of development, you know, development, a pilot production. You know, post and current. That's awesome. Thanks for that detailed description and explanation because it's, uh, it's a mistake that founders often make when they want to launch.

 

They have an idea, and they want to boil the ocean, right? They want to do way too much, and they want to seek. Too much money and they'll never get funded because they're trying to do too much. And investors are savvy enough to know you need to focus, right? Let alone a founder should focus.  Some of them, you know, have lofty dreams and, and, and an arrogance that they have the solution.

 

That's going to, you know, save the world. When in fact, they'll never get off the ground because they haven't focused properly on what is that vertical market? What is that MVP that can actually succeed, gain traction, and then create a roadmap of five-year plan of features, right? Not launching them all at once but start with some initial success.

 

One that you can talk about in marketing, but also share with potential investors.  So, I would pull. I'm going to swap arrogance out for almost an enthusiasm. It's actually a euphoria. I'm going to call it a euphoria because it is very, you know, you get too much in the weeds, you know, as you're as you're being a founder.

 

And I'll also say that that by starting in that focused space, it allows you to learn, right? If you're trying to, yes, you know, boil the ocean, you know, eat the elephant with the fork, right? You're then there's, there's not this beautiful ability to be solving a specific set of problems within a specific space and say, oh, One, this actually doesn't solve it, or two, wow, we actually solve something else, or three, well, the entire possibility, you know, my entire roadmap just expanded based on what I'm learning in this one affordable, manageable relationship, you know, having smaller iteration as I begin.

 

Yeah, I, I could replace that word, arrogance, with, Blind enthusiasm as well. I, I would totally take that.  Uh, so please tell us how we can get Corgi and start using it and where you're at in terms of consumers being able to use your product. Right. Well, we've been consumer facing since mid-February. So, you go to Korgi board.

 

com. You can spell it any way you want. It's going to go to K O R G I board, B O A R D. Com. Corgi with a K. I am very old school and was used to having, you know, index cards on cork boards, you know, in every office I ever had in the, you know, early years of my producing career. And so, the first version I built had a corkboard background, and then you could toggle it to a whiteboard background.

 

And when I brought my first dev in, who was 25 years old, you know, he finally, one day we were feverishly working on something. And he was like, can I ask you, what's with the picture with the dots? And I said, what picture with the dots? He was like, the brown dots. I was like, okay. The cork board? He'd never seen a cork board.

 

He did not know it, and so we immediately switched the default background to the white board, but I love getting on calls with users and seeing the cork board. And so, the original name of this was corky boards, corky boards. Okay, got it. And very instantly, everyone said corky, and I was like, Wait a minute.

 

They're so cute. They're trustworthy. They're loyal. They're that's everything in my brand guide. And so, it became Corgi very quickly, but with a K. So, you go to Korgi Board. com. You sign up unsurprisingly with your Google account. You are not creating any credentials that we're going to store. It's going to ask you for three key permissions because everything that we're doing in Google is being saved to your Google sheets stored in your Google drive and calendar to your calendar.

 

And so there are versions of those minimal versions of those, of some of those permissions that you have to say yes to, and then you come in and you see your board. And that's where I'm hopeful people, we have free office hours, we have videos, we have really fun, you know, initial onboarding to help you build your first board.

 

But the real thing I want people to think about, and we're helping people with our templates and the office hours, and the onboarding is you have to think about. How do I want to organize my information? Curt, you are a consultant. And so, you know, that everyone we talk to every client we have is managing their information in that very personal way.

 

Not always in an effective way, but certainly always in a personal way. And so, the thing I get excited about with Corgi is whether you want to come in and say, I'm going to have a Kanban board and here's all my cards and I'm going to move them stages of, you know, completion. Obviously if you're doing a script or a treatment or something, then EV or books, everything's by chapter or by scene or by act.

 

Or if you're doing pitch decks, you're going to have slide calls. You can make it any way you want. But for a lot of people, that's where the productivity tool is a little stress inducing. It's like, I don't know how I want to set up my day. And so that's where we say, just go to a template, use our to do template, use our production or our pre pro template, use our, you know, character development template, whatever you're going to use, start with a board.

 

And, and, and then you can also ask Corgi AI and Corgi AI will give you suggestions on how to build a Corgi board to get your project going. That's amazing. And what I love. I mean, it gets very technical when you talk about integrating Google and Microsoft and boards, and it's a very complex life that you're trying to make simple.

 

But what I love is the simplicity of the benefit. Meaning time and I, I, I preach about this a lot is, is AI generally will save one time. And what are you going to do with that time? That's, that's the million-dollar question. And though you are supercharging your users, making them into super powered superheroes.

 

And they're more efficient, more valuable, and will have a long career. What is this next level of creativity, even, that people can achieve with this newfound time? And I, I think that's an often-neglected benefit that's not talked about enough. And the people who have embraced generative AI have found this, and a lot of obstacles.

 

have been removed from tasks and projects and ideas and allowed people to move forward with their dreams in a new way.  And I think a tool platform like yours, Corgi, is helping facilitate that in a very unique way. So, congratulations. Thank you. And I'm a I want to start using it because I need my life to be set up.

 

Let's get you set up. Yeah, please, please. So, so listen, we want to have you back again on the show because we'd love to track your progress. You're, you know, a focus of the show is talking with AI founders. And I think it's important not only for you to explain your product, but for other founders to hear your story so that they can be inspired and follow your example, and it's so admirable that you're completely bootstrapped, which is very rare these days.

 

So, thank you for being a guest and everybody out there listening or watching. Thanks for tuning in and catch more of our Realm IQ sessions on your favorite podcast platforms like Spotify and YouTube. Please follow and smash that subscribe button. Thank you so much. And thanks DMA. You're a terrific guest.

 

Thank you. 

 

RealmIQ.  Book your corporate AI workshop today.  CurtDoty. co.  Branding, marketing, and product development.

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