Roger Chen

🪣 Building something new.
🤳 Previously founder of @lobbyapp_ , #1 on the app store in UK, Germany, Italy, Australia, Saudi, Egypt, etc.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

Yesterday, our team gathered around an old dining table in our hacker house in Twin Peaks, SF, and launched Bro on the App Store.

This morning, we woke up to Bro sitting at #1 in Lifestyle and #6 overall.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

PROOOOOOMPT IT, THEN PUUUUUUUUSH ITTTTT

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

There's not that much of a perception difference between asking AI a question and asking AI to do stuff for you. Only AI people know the technical difference. Normies just think they are chatting.

[signüll @signulll]

facebook once had a product called workplace.

it was basically facebook’s slack competitor, & it was actually really good. but it failed & got shut down. the problem wasn’t resources. facebook had infinite distribution, talent, infra, brand awareness, etc.

the problem was perception.

people understood facebook as a place to hang out, post photos, scroll, message friends, & participate in social life. they did not understand it as a place to do work. the product may have been good, but the cultural meaning of the brand fought the use case.

chatgpt may face a version of this.

openai can absolutely execute the product transition from chatbot to agent. the team is obviously talented enough. but the harder challenge is moving user perception from “this is where i ask ai questions” to “this is where i connect my calendar, email, files, finances, photos, workflows, preferences, & let it actually do things for me.”

that is a very different psychological contract.

the agentic era asks users to move from prompting a tool to delegating parts of their life. & that means the interface is only half the problem. the other half is narrative, packaging, permissioning, & making the transition feel inevitable instead of creepy.

it’ll be interesting to see if ppl wanna connect stuff to chatgpt? it makes sense for codex for work etc. maybe.

also most of agent stuff is productivity related today, & normal ppl outside of work don’t optimize for productivity, they want to feel stuff, delight, entertainment, etc. that’s also a very diff product too.

800m users is a gift but also transitioning ppl is hard as fuck esp when you have metrics to not tank & esp now that there are ads.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@NotionHQ @ivanhzhao dude open this up!

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

why does this kid look exactly like @johnsummit 💀

[NickyX @NickyXPhoto]

This fuckin kid 🤣🚀

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@WillowVoiceAI Lipsync accuracy on your avatars is insane.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@coda_hq Cool when can I get access?

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@shishirmehrotra my entire stack has Claude connectors now. Figma ✅ GitHub ✅ Slack ✅ @coda_hq ❌ Notion shipped a full MCP server months ago. Been a coda user for 5 years but Notion be shipping on china speed and you guys shipping on european speed.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

When did we decide to put substack inside twitter? I am just trying to see memes.

[Chris Albon @chrisalbon]

Alright listen San Francisco. Everyone cant sell shovels. Someone has to mine something.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@paulwarren_ @AppStore @readwithmargins Congrats Paul!

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

appreciate the chat @JosephKChoi . first time on a podcast and would love to use this opportunity to get to know more friends to jam ideas with. My DM is always open!

[Joseph Choi @JosephKChoi]

full interview with roger: https://t.co/Mi5y6v4HAs

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@JosephKChoi appreciate the chat joseph!

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

at this point I don't understand the people voluntarily putting their event up on Luma. Inflicting self-damage before the event even starts.

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@jonnyburch Would love an invite!

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

I will switch to whatever slack replacement where the search feature actually works

[ethan ding 📊 @TheEthanDing]

AI NATIVE SLACK IS JUST SLACK

THE BLOAT IN SLACK IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE, NOT PRODUCT

MIDWIT HIRES LIKE TO CREATE PROJECTS AND BUSYWORK BC THEY LITERALLY CANNOT PRODUCE VALHE

AI DOESNT SOLVE THIS

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@DarrenTheLi @zarazhangrui @laurentdelrey @MakeGizmos thanks sis @DarrenTheLi

[Roger Chen @RealRogerChen]

@zarazhangrui yeah gotta go direct