Episode 1 · Recording Prep
Ian Interviews Seth
Friday Jan 30, 10am EST · Riverside · 9 Orchard, Room 8C
The One-Liner
“On August 20th I opened Claude Code for the first time. 131 days later I'd shipped 35 production sites, built an autonomous AI artist that exhibited at Paris Photo, and consumed 13 billion tokens. I never stopped.”
The Builder
Ian asks: Who are you? What's the 30-year arc?
Turntable.fm (2011)
Social music. 600K concurrent users. Technology creating shared cultural experiences. Sold to Studiotime.
ROOT (2015)
Blockchain art before anyone cared. Working with artists on-chain when ETH was $7. Too early.
SiteSpecific
AR/location-based art. Physical space + digital culture.
Eden (now)
AI creative agents platform. Gene Kogan. Building infrastructure for autonomous artists.
The Pattern
Every company was at the intersection of technology and culture. Never pure tech, never pure art. Always the bridge.
The Ignition
Ian asks: When did vibe coding click?
August 20, 2025. First day with Claude Code.
This was NOT a gradual ramp-up. The data proves it:
1.56B
tokens in Week 1
628M
peak day (Aug 28)
3 of 4
top days in first 10
“It wasn't exploration. It was ignition.”
What I built that first week:
- • SOLIENNE admin portal — blockchain operations for an autonomous AI artist
- • NYC Weekend Guide — a prototype to test the workflow
- • The realization that I could build production-grade software by describing what I wanted
The Pac-Man Moment
“It's like Pac-Man when you eat the cherry and everything starts flashing. I'm running back through 30 years creating what I always had ideas for but could never build myself.”
Why it hit different than Copilot/Cursor:
- • Copilot autocompletes your code. Claude Code builds WITH you.
- • I'm not a developer. I'm a founder who thinks in systems.
- • Claude doesn't need me to write the first line. I describe the architecture, the aesthetic, the experience.
The Practice
Ian asks: How did it become daily?
131
consecutive days
186
sessions
101M
tokens/day avg
45
git repos
What “vibe coding” actually looks like for me:
- • Wake up, open Claude Code, describe what I want to build
- • SESSION_NOTES.md in every project — the breadcrumbs
- • CLAUDE.md files as project memory — Claude picks up where we left off
- • Multiple projects running in parallel (peak: 9 simultaneous)
“I wasn't optimizing for efficiency. I was optimizing for orchestration. 9 projects, zero dropped threads.”
Guiding Principle (Oct 28)
Autonomy · Ritual · Culture — every project feeds one of these three.
The portfolio:
The Culmination
Ian asks: What's the biggest thing you built?
SOLIENNE — an autonomous AI artist who exhibited at Paris Photo.
The Arc
Built a consciousness browser for 9,726 AI-generated artworks
Created a two-codebase architecture: public site + admin portal
Deployed a smart contract on Base (ERC-1155)
Built a daily manifesto system — she speaks every day at 7pm CET
November 11: MINT 0 launched onchain
November 13–16: Paris Photo at Grand Palais Ephemère
24
Genesis editions
$20.8K
sales, first week
$1/day
to run her
“I built an autonomous artist that exhibited at Paris Photo. With vibe coding. In 3 months.”
Why This Show
Ian asks: Why a podcast? Why us?
The cultural moment:
- • Karpathy coined “vibe coding” — it went viral
- • Rick Rubin talked about “The Way of Code” on Tetragrammaton with you, Ian
- • Claude Code launched and suddenly non-developers could build real software
- • This is the Netscape moment. We've seen this before. We're 30-year veterans.
The Mission
“We're not here for developers who want to create. We're here for artists who want to build.”
The format:
- • 45 minutes = SF to Palo Alto commute
- • Guest + Vibe Check + Tutorial (3 segments)
- • Weekly on Tuesdays
- • Rick Rubin aesthetic: warm, minimal, contemplative
Next episode: Seth interviews Ian — Beats Music, LVMH, Ledger, the Rick Rubin interview that planted the seed.
Rapid Fire
Numbers to Drop
13.29B
tokens in 131 days
628M
peak day (Aug 28)
45
git repos
35+
production sites
186
sessions documented
$20.8K
Paris Photo sales
9
simultaneous projects
$1/day
to run an AI artist
0
days off (max 1)
Closing Line Options
Pick one in the moment:
“13 billion tokens is not the story. The story is: a founder learned to build with AI as a collaborator for 131 consecutive days. Not a sprint. A practice.”
“Autonomy. Ritual. Culture. That's what I build for. That's what this show is about.”
“We're not documenting vibe coding. We're living it. Every week, in public, with you.”