Paul Veugen

We carry more compute in our hands than sits in the entire cloud, yet almost all the money flows to data centers. For five years we've built on-device first at Detail and Subwave, shipping local rendering, captions, and enhancement while keeping video on the device. Through NP-Hard we backed Mirai, pushing LLM inference to 1,000 tokens per second, and at Detail we use Argmax's on-device speech mod...

Two new on-device AI audio models are shipping across Detail and Subwave this week, and both were built in-house. Until recently, the benchmark for audio enhancement was Dolby: server-side processing, per-minute pricing, and a generic output that sounded identical regardless of the app it came from. Building the alternative became possible because of four things arriving at the same time: open-sou...

Modern podcasting requires managing content across every platform where audiences actually live. YouTube became the largest podcast platform in 2024, with Spotify hosting half a million video podcasts. Industry research shows 57% of new podcast discoveries now start on social feeds, not the full episode. Independent creators face a brutal workflow tax: six different tools costing $200-300 per mont...

Building a platform for creators starts with being your own first user. When Detail launched five years ago, the team kept reaching for other tools because the product wasn't ready. The rule became simple: make all marketing content with Detail, or the product isn't ready to ship. Every broken workflow became input for improvement. Subwave is being built the same way. The entire team is publishing...

The geopolitical landscape around digital platforms has shifted dramatically. The Trump administration banned former EU commissioner Thierry Breton from the US for enforcing content moderation rules, while the State Department actively opposes European data sovereignty laws. US cloud providers control 85% of the European market, creating infrastructure dependencies that now carry significant polit...

AI is collapsing the cost of building interfaces to near zero, which means the traditional moat of controlling the user experience is disappearing. When personal agents can curate custom feeds and apps can be assembled on demand, what matters shifts to what's built beneath the surface: content networks, identity layers, moderation standards, and trust relationships. Bluesky demonstrates this shift...

This episode introduces Detail and Subwave, two products built to solve the friction in video creation and distribution. Detail is a video creation app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that includes features like an adaptive teleprompter, multi-camera recording, and AI auto-editing. Recently selected by Apple for the Best of App Store awards, Detail helps creators go from idea to polished video in minute...

Over the past twenty years, media has evolved from user-generated content in the social graph to algorithmic feeds, and now to long-form subscription models. Each wave has produced new winners, from Facebook and Instagram to TikTok and YouTube. But the platforms that drove growth are now failing creators: Instagram shows posts to only 4% of followers, while TikTok delivers views without building r...

Video is the defining medium of the decade, but the platforms are built for addiction and ad revenue, not storytelling. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram dictate format, pace, and who sees your work while keeping your audience for themselves. Meanwhile, trust is eroding. Whistleblowers revealed how financial incentives drive algorithmic decisions at Meta and TikTok, with safety subordinated to growth...

This piece explores how AI agents are fundamentally changing the structure of software by interacting directly with components rather than finished products. Instead of adding another layer of abstraction like previous technology waves, agents pull the stack apart and reassemble APIs, databases, and protocols into personalized configurations that serve one person in one context. The shift makes we...

After five years building video tools, we couldn't shake a growing discomfort: the platforms we create for have become engineered to keep you pulling the lever. Then a 1950 lecture by a Canadian economist made everything click. His theory about civilizations and media explains exactly what's broken today, and why we're now living through the most extreme imbalance in human history. We've watched c...