An AI CEO's Warning: Deepfakes Will Make You Question Reality

Sean Weisbrot: Vikram Chalana is the founder and CEO of Pictory, an AI tool that converts long form content and such as blogs and webinars into a month's worth of engaging visual and social media content all in a matter of minutes. Vikram has spent a long time working in AI, and this is his third company to date. I wanted to talk with him because AI is changing so much of the world. And for someone who's spent, for someone who spent so much time in the industry, I wanted to hear from him what are the hardest things about ai? What are the strangest things about ai? Is he afraid of ai, what he thinks the future of AI looks like? How his business is using ai. But then we also went into his psychology and what made him wanna be an ai, how he sees himself in his businesses, how he's had to change himself in order to keep running these businesses. What he thinks VC can, uh, how he thinks VC should be changed, how he's changed himself and so much more. So I know you're gonna love this conversation. Let's enjoy it now. So your company uses AI to help people with content marketing. Is this meant to take away from people's jobs or to augment people's jobs?

Vikram Chalana: I think of AI as. Assistant assisted intelligence, not, uh, artificial or augmented intelligence. So I think of this as, as really helping people with productivity improve improvements and, uh, and just taking some of the routine stuff out of your, uh, out of your plate. It's all about augmenting.

Sean Weisbrot: Helping. I, I agree. I think that should be the focus of how AI evolves, and I don't mean evolve is like it's gonna become a robot and kill us, evolve in terms of how it's used. I think one of the biggest problems we see now is that companies are trying to get rid of humans by implementing AI where. There's so much work that needs human input that you really can't replace an AI with a human. But having an AI can help the human do a better job. A lot of people say, oh, we're gonna replace lawyers and doctors. I. Well, probably not. I mean, sure the AI can go through all the legal files and all of the statutes and or all of the, you know, images of cancer versus non-cancer, et cetera. There, there's all sorts of things that AI can do that a human just doesn't have the time to do. But at the end of the day, you still need a human to really perform a lot of the functions, like an AI doesn't have bedside manner. Not to say humans are great at it either, but some of them are. What made you want to get into ai?

Vikram Chalana: I have been in AI for a really long time. I have been in AI for over 30 years now. My, when I was in school, I got exposed to something called neural Networks way back in the, uh, late eighties, and, and I read this first paper and it just blew me away. I was like. What this is how the brain works and, and we can artificially simulate it in a computer and actually make it do something helpful, meaningful. And I've been, I've been fascinated by that and uh, and I've pursued this for a long time. And, uh, the first realization about neural networks that I had was that, hey, it's actually math. It's really. Statistics and ma mathematical models that you optimize, uh, a big equation. And then you, you, you come up with a, with, um, with a solution for that. You can then use it for prediction. So for the longest time, people had been doing statistical predictions since, you know, since data ever existed in the fifties and stuff. But, but now there was a different way of looking at it. You didn't always have to have. An explanation. You can have a black box that does certain things for you. You just provided input and output and, and it trains a model for you that is, uh, it works really well. And uh, and so I was just like, that black box concept feels like the brain and it's just been fascinating throughout my life.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there anything about AI that scares you?

Vikram Chalana: I think with this recent. Generative AI spade. Like, one of the things that I worry about is all this disinformation and this deep fakes and, um, cloning of real people's voices to say something that they never said that stuff is, is scary. And, and we just have to take everything with a grain of salt now. You know, I, I think that's the, that's the one thing that I scared, I scared about, but I think, I think humans are. Whenever we get scared, we identify a problem that is, gives us the impetus to identify the solution as well. So we are coming up with solutions. The, uh, scientists and the technologists are coming up with great solutions to identify deep, fake identify, um, you know, misinformation, things that are blatantly false. So I, I, I think we'll have, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful. That's the one thing I'm scared about, but I think we'll have solutions.

Sean Weisbrot: I think we have to be hopeful about this, but I also feel like if someone can come up with a solution to a deep fake, then someone else can come up with a solution. To have something that's more deep than a deep fake or whatever the correct terminology would be it. It feels like a never ending battle. How so? How can we remain hopeful?

Vikram Chalana: I think it's, it's true of anything. I mean, we've had cryptography, people trying to, um, you know, break into, into computers and hackers, uh, on all, all kinds of things. We've, this is a cat and mouse game and it's been like this forever. And, and, uh, there will be people who have mal intentions and, uh, and there'll be people who have, uh. Who, who, who, who try to solve that. And I think I, I think human ingenuity is, is the, the reason for hope

Sean Weisbrot: really. cause I feel like humans are the reason why we shouldn't be hopeful.

Vikram Chalana: The half, the half empty and the half full.

Sean Weisbrot: I've traveled to over 40 countries and I've met. I can't tell you thousands of people, and I feel like the vast majority of them are afraid of the future and they're afraid of each other. And maybe that colors my, my half glass full or empty kind of, uh, mentality.

Vikram Chalana: I, I hear you. Although to some degree we're wired to be scared, to be fearful. Um. When our ancestors were in the Savannah and there's, there's always animals that, that were about to jump off and chase us. So it's a survival thing. We we're always wired to be fearful and, uh, and I, I think hope is actually the evolution that, that, that, that helped us get out of there. And uh, uh, and it helps us escape every day.

Sean Weisbrot: What's been one of the hardest things about AI for you?

Vikram Chalana: Because I've been working in this field for so long, uh, there have been different hard problems at different phases. Um, I think one of the hardest thing when about five, seven years ago when deep learning came out, when you had like these really detailed models with a lot of parameters that you can start, um, you could start to train on the explainability of it. Why chat, GPT something does something or responds with something. The why of it is, is kind of the one that really intrigues me and, and it's really the hardest thing to get my arm around is like, okay, why does it work? Why, um, why does this image. Generate this way, or why does this recognize this to be this object? And it's really like, it's really hard to explain with AI models because there's so many parameters, so many deep things that are happening that, uh, so the amount of data is obviously a hard thing. cause, cause to train these models have taken enormous amount of data. So, the com compute and the memory and all that stuff is hard. Um. But I think the harder thing, this, the meta thing for me is I can't explain why it works. It works.

Sean Weisbrot: Which do you think the future of AI is more likely to occur? A few companies own the vast majority of power, or a lot of open source or smaller companies in a more decentralized manner?

Vikram Chalana: I think it'll be a combination of both, just like it is today. Uh, it's, there's some companies. Who created these, uh, I mean, OpenAI created this with a lot of investment from Microsoft and, and, and all that stuff. But then pretty soon right after that, we had Facebook open source there, LLM models, Lama and the like. And uh, and there's a lot of innovation going on and, and in open-source models and, and, uh, um, so I, I feel it'll be, it'll be a combination of both the. Uh, the startups and the open-source community can move much faster because of the power of so many brains working on it and the, and the big companies, but also move fast because they have the investments and the people behind it. So, it'll, it'll be both just like it's always been. I don't think there's any, um. Has it been any time where it's just been one or the other,

Sean Weisbrot: what do you think the next big breakthrough or use of AI is going to be? From what you can see, I,

Vikram Chalana: I mean, we've already, we're already seen many of these things and they're just gonna get better over time. I, I had, uh, I sat in a self-driving car in San Francisco, uh, last week, uh, for the first time. And I was blown away like, this is. Uh, in, in the city. It wasn't even like in the freeway where you have like, you know, much, much more defined driving patterns, but in the city where you have like people crossing streets and uh, cars parked anywhere and speed bumps, and it was handling all of those situations. So well, and it was freaky to watch the staring, like steer itself and, and, uh, um, but uh, I mean that stuff is gonna get better. It's gonna be more available, uh. There was an Uber driver I talked to if he's like, is he, are you scared of self-driving cars? And he said, no, I wanna buy one so I can have that working for me when, when I'm sleeping. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Um, there's gonna be a driver, there is already a driver shortage, Uber shortage in most American cities. So, this stuff is gonna help out, uh, in, in transportation. So, I mean, some of this is already happening. Um. Even this, um, the, the stuff we're seeing with chat GPT and LA large language models, um, they're getting better and better at different tasks. There's gonna be task specific things in AI that we'll see. Uh, at, at my startup, we're doing video generation with ai and it keeps getting better and better. Um, and, and so that like anyone can create or edit videos, uh, and. That's gonna get, um, there. So, there's, I, I feel like there's so many, like different modalities, different, uh, areas of our life that AI will affect in the future.

Sean Weisbrot: I was talking with a teenager the other day and they were talking about cars. They said something about when they have a car in the future, and I was like. You might not ever be allowed to drive because, or your kids may never be allowed to drive. It might be illegal for humans to drive one day, and that would be really interesting to see

Vikram Chalana: the, the safety of these self-driving cars is amazing, the safety record.

Sean Weisbrot: So, let's extrapolate five years from now, I know you're talking about generative AI getting better, but do you think. Generative AI will be the topic for five more years, or do you think we'll have another breakthrough? Because I know that there's, you said that there's different sets of problems that have happened over time that have kind of created these plateaus in growth. Right. Um, sometimes for 10 or 15 years at a time. And obviously chat, TPT created or enabled this newest breakthrough and, and I guess it's the way that they built the model. And, and therefore the generative AI became possible. Do you think we're just gonna focus on that or are there any other kind of roadblocks to a, a massive change? Because generative AI seems massive now, but in a few years maybe it won't anymore.

Vikram Chalana: Definitely not. Yeah. I mean, we already see hype. Dying. So, there's a famous graph called the Hype Cycle. Uh, Gartner invented it, like, you know, you see something really hyping up and then, then you kind of start, it comes to this trough of disillusionment, and after that trough, you actually start seeing. Valuable things happen with that technology. So, I feel like we're kind of just at the peak of the hype. We're just beyond that a little bit in generative ai. We're, we still haven't seen the trough yet, and then we'll start seeing, I. A lot more valuable things coming out of that. And there'll be similar hype cycles for other technologies in the future. I can't predict this. I'm, I'm really not a futurist, but, uh, there will be other fascinating things that we'll see in our lifetimes, Sean, and, and, uh, and we'll go like, oh my gosh, this is, this has so much potential.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. I, I try to be a futurist. But in the realm of ai, I struggle because I'm not, I'm not technical, right? All I can do is look at technology and try to extrapolate, right? So, for me, I know that Quantum's something that people are really heavily investing in. So, I feel like when you can put AI into a stable quantum system, like all bets are off, that, that's really the bulk of what I can see right now, what that actually means for individual industries or specific things. I can't, I can't under, I'm not able to extrapolate on, on that level. Um. But I do like to ask these questions because I don't know what people are thinking or feeling, and it's, it's cool to kind of see that. I actually just wrote a newsletter, published it today, about which is better being a founder or a vc. And the reason why I wrote that is because I had interviewed someone earlier this year who was an entrepreneur and then became a VC, and then decided to go back to being an entrepreneur again. And so, he learned something from both sides, and he felt like being one. Enabled him to be better at the other. And then ultimately that being an entrepreneur was the thing he preferred. And part of my argument is being a VC is really interesting because as a founder, you're focused on one thing for a long period of time. But as a VC, you have thousands of companies coming to you every year and you get to see what trends are happening before they become a trend. And so, I find that very fascinating. Um. So, yeah, I, I am I really. I like to engage in this kind of thought. Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of what we're in, every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love. So that we can bring you something amazing and every week we try really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So, your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now.

Vikram Chalana: Yeah, I, I, I really like that discussion. I mean, the founder versus vc. cause I deal with a lot of VCs. Um, I have VCs who are investors in my company and, and I talk to VCs and, and, uh, and I, I was in fact thinking about this, like, yes, they do get exposed to a lot of, um, a lot of technology. But, but there is, there is this thrill of creating something, building something that, that they, I. They get to sit on the sidelines of that as opposed to being in the middle of it. And, uh, and, and it depends on how, what your personality is and what you really like. And I, yeah, I'm, I'm on the creator side. I love to create things

Sean Weisbrot: I used to think I liked to create, but I find myself enjoying being more of an investor now because then I can help other people create. Without having to do the dirty work

Vikram Chalana: and hard work. Yes.

Sean Weisbrot: Right, exactly. So, I'm able to look at those trends and go, okay, I'm going to invest in, in this industry. So, for example, you're talking about this graph and you're talking about full hype. It would've been so easy for me to invest in a company that was really early, that had a generative ai, generative AI idea. Chances are in a year or two, a lot of those companies are gonna be dead. They're gonna be acquired, or they're gonna die because they can't monetize, or people don't wanna use it anymore, or there's someone that's cheaper. So, there's gonna be this massive consolidation of companies, and I would rather invest in companies that are providing services to those companies. Or to enterprise companies, because those companies will still be here at the end of the trough of disillusion. I mean, you could probably use all three of those words. Yes. Trough of de delusion is probably a good one. Um, or the, yeah, the, the height of delusion. So, I, I would rather invest in companies that serve those companies because they'll still be here. Those companies will still be here, and then maybe in a year or two when we're in the trough, the companies that remain will be the strongest ones and they survive. And those are the ones that I think are investible.

Vikram Chalana: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great viewpoint. I think, um, I'm, I'm from, I'm, I'm from Seattle, so, uh, Seattle made its living or its beginning. By this phrase called Mind the Miners. cause a lot of people were headed to Alaska for the, during the Gold rush. And uh, and Seattle was the place where they, they'd buy supplies and, and uh, get there, get their gear. And so, a lot of Seattle grew during that phase. And so, what you're talking about is just exactly that. It's, it's people who are empowering the miners, who are going on the, on the gold rush. Uh,

Sean Weisbrot: yeah, I think of it somewhere. I think of it like, uh, Levi's jeans, apparently they made more money than anyone else just supplying them with clothes to go and pan

Vikram Chalana: during the cold, right? Yes. Right,

Sean Weisbrot: exactly. It's like, can't, you know, they did a good job. Might as well, you know, take their idea, kind of like the, um, the railroad, you know, creators, right. They're like, we want people to move around. We're not gonna build towns. We're just gonna build the opportunity for you to go and build new towns and send supplies back and forth between the developed areas and the undeveloped areas. You do whatever you want with it. We're just gonna make money from you every single time you wanna do it.

Vikram Chalana: Yeah. Although, like I, I'm not sure I, I would completely, um, the analogy of Gold Rush and AI rush is probably not. Not adequate, not a, ontotheology, but, but regardless, I think the, the point that you're trying to make is, is you know that the infrastructure, the providers, the people who can help these companies, um, are, are potentially gonna survive.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I mean the, the first like industry that I really focused on as an adult was the blockchain industry, going back to 2015, and. There were a ton of, you know, ICOs and other projects, and there was massive hype around all of them, and everyone wanted to get in because everyone thought they were gonna make a bunch of money. If you look at it now, almost all of them are dead. But what I did was, instead of making my own, I provided services to those companies that wanted to make their own, and I made money helping them do what they wanted to do, which is why now I'm trying to do the same thing, but in ai. Mm-hmm. It worked Once surely it'll work again.

Vikram Chalana: That's awesome. Good.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. So you've founded several companies in the past. This is, I believe your victory is your third or your fourth? Third,

Vikram Chalana: yeah, my third. Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: your third. Which one has been the toughest so far, and why?

Vikram Chalana: Again, different companies, different stages, and uh, and I mean, I, I'll try to draw analogies between the different companies and, and, and share the, the tough parts happen at different times and, uh, so in my first company we were, the building part is a lot of fun. Getting your first customer is a lot of fun. Um. Getting the first investor is often a tough part because you know, you haven't proven yourself not enough. So that's been, that's always been tough. So in the first time around, getting an investor was tough. Second time around I decided, hey, I didn't want an investor. I wanna bootstrap it. So, so we bootstrapped it for the first, you know, seven years. And, and then we got a lot of like inbound interest from VCs wanting to put, put money, um, and, and the different kind of VCs, the growth equity type people. And, uh, and they come in later when the company's about four or 5 million in revenue and, and, uh, and then they, then it, it becomes much easier. The conversation is inbound and, and so, but the hard part there becomes scaling. cause once, once you take the VC money at that stage, then they expect you to scale. And uh, and the hardest part in scaling is think of, think of your house. If you have a, a single story house, say Aler, and you want to add a second story to it, you first have to destroy the foundation. You have to create a new foundation before you can put the first story and the second story back up. And that can be gut wrenching for founders in and, and by, by destroying the foundation, I mean like, you know, maybe the people you hired early on are not the right that help you scale the systems that you put in the place, the things that you, that worked for you while you built the first. Floor of the house don't work anymore when you, when you're about to add the second floor. So that's probably the hardest thing that, uh, that I've done, uh, in any of these companies is, is parting ways with early people that you hired in the company. Um, and, uh, um, so I haven't encountered that with picture yet, but, uh, um, but I'm. Again, the lessons learned is like, okay, you find people who can scale, but every person has different scaling, uh, limits and, and scaling ranges. People who are good at zero to 1 million may not be good at the one to 10 million, and people who are great at one to 10 million won't get you from 10 to a hundred.

Sean Weisbrot: Makes sense. I've heard that before. How have you had to change yourself? From the beginning of your journey until now?

Vikram Chalana: I think I, there was a lot more arrogance I had before that I had to turn into humility over time because, and it's really interesting because you'd think, you know, you've done it once, the second time would be easier and the third time would be even easier. But it's never that way. Uh, every product is different, every market is different. Every time in the industry is different. So. So you're constantly having to evolve yourself. But I think the, the realization that it's all about having a learning mindset and growth mindset, uh, I've, I've had a lot more over the years and, and, and I feel like that, um, you know, that that's one big change I can, I can see in myself.

Sean Weisbrot: What's something you. Have wanted to change, but you've struggled to do so or you've avoided doing it?

Vikram Chalana: That's a really good question, and I don't have a, I, I don't have a good answer. I think we all have things that we stick to and, and, and that we should, uh, we should, we should shed, we should change. Um, I, I would still say, I mean, I don't think I've completely rid myself of arrogance and, uh, and there's still a little ways to go.

Sean Weisbrot: The thing that I've needed to change and haven't is I eat really fast and I eat everything on my plate, even if it means I'm really full at the end of it, which is not healthy.

Vikram Chalana: I, I, that's a good point too. I often go for seconds and I shouldn't. Mm, good point.

Sean Weisbrot: What do you enjoy the most about running companies?

Vikram Chalana: I, I have to say, working with people, whether it's customers, whether it's your team. Uh, I don't think I could build a solo business. That's just not me. Uh, I love working with smart people and, and just the ideas that people have and, and I love, I. I love ideas. I just love ideas and, and, and I love the ideas that different people can have and, and different people from different backgrounds can have. And, and so interacting with, with smart people from different backgrounds is kind of, uh, that's, that's why I started this company this third time around because I didn't need to, but, but I really miss that working with people.

Sean Weisbrot: I can feel that from you. Yeah. When you talk about it, you, you're smiling and you're, you're animated and you can see your hands moving, so you can tell it's real. What's something you wish you could change about vc,

Vikram Chalana: the whole VC community? The whole VC world, or VC as Vikram Talena?

Sean Weisbrot: Uh, funny enough, no, not yourself. The, the VC as a whole, as an industry.

Vikram Chalana: Yeah. I. I think I've, and I've interacted with hundreds of VCs in, in my, uh, uh, my career. My, and one of the things I realize is they are very hype driven. They are very, um, I, I wish people were, were more. Different, they are all kind of operate in the same path. Um, and a lot of VCs, they'll be like, okay, everything is about generative ai. So every, we are all gonna invest about gen in generative AI right now. So, so you get a lot of calls and, and then, um, and, and then that's kind of one of the things at, at another company that I was doing, which was a medical device company, I was trying to kind of get people to. Look at it in a certain way that the devices, medical devices have a different lifespan. They have a different, uh, um, you know, you can't apply a B2B SaaS formula to a medical device company. But, uh, it's just like you're, you're always kind of, and I mean, and possibly it works for them, right? Because that, that's the, that's the reason why people go this way is like, you know. Going after trends, going after the hype works and, and if they can invest in one out of 10 and make that successful, um, that, that works. But I, if there's only one thing I would wish for VCs is take more risks, take do something different.

Sean Weisbrot: I think all VCs should be forced to start a company before they're allowed to be investors. cause I think a lot of VCs. Who are just money. People don't know what it's like to run a company, and so it's hard for them to align themselves emotionally with us, and so it's easier for them to be cutthroat.

Vikram Chalana: I think we have, uh, there's room for both and I, I, I've seen both kind of like operator VCs as well as VCs who are pure finance people, um, as well as VCs who are amazing salespeople. And so they're able to make connections because. Again, they, they haven't, their sales have come from, you know, selling to LPs and selling to all these other companies. So they have like amazing networks that you may not get as a founder. Uh, and you only get that as being a VC because that's the world you, you've lived in. And, uh, and then the, the VC who's a, who's been a founder before, they, they have a really good perspective on, on the business and, and, uh, and can give you. A lot of great business advice, uh, but I see room for both.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you have a care routine to take care of yourself so that you can have longevity in running these businesses without burning out?

Vikram Chalana: I, I'm all about balance in life and, uh, and I have, uh, my care routine is about 30 minutes of meditation every morning, uh, and, and at least 40 to 50 minutes of some kind of exercise every day. Uh, running, walking, um, doing something and then, then keeping the weekends or at least one day of the weekend to myself and some, and family and personal activities. And, and I love hiking here in Seattle. We have lots of great, uh, uh, hikes and, um, you know, mountains that we can go to and water that we can kayak. And so I think that balance is really important, uh, for all of us, not just entrepreneurs. I.

Sean Weisbrot: For sure. I've been trying to slow down since I left the US 15 years ago, and it's very hard because Americans have this mentality of time is money and you have to go, go, go. You always have to be doing something. But a lot of other countries, they just don't have that. That mentality and being American, outside of America. People keep going, you're not in America anymore. You should adapt. It's like, yeah, but how do you rewire that? And I struggled in China, I struggled in Vietnam and now in Portugal, I feel like I'm, it. It's starting to be easier for me because the weather is always so beautiful. It only rains like 20 days out of the year. And like right now it's like 22, 23 degrees Celsius. There's like no clouds in the ski. So you have this beautiful breeze from the ocean and you have not a cloud in the sky, and the air is clean and you just don't wanna go inside. Like right now, I'm inside and I am not happy about being inside. I'd rather be outside, even if it means not working. I'd rather be outside. And I find myself working a lot less in Europe because I just want to enjoy like what's here. So. I've started to pick up golf again and archery and things that I did in Asia when I had a moment to spare. And, um, so that's really kind of the thing that I am, I'm doing to balance myself out. I also meditate. I've been meditating for 19 years, meditate 35 minutes a day, and meditation is great. I also walk yesterday I, I decided not to really work at all and I ended up walking like four hours, walked about 20 kilometers. It's a little shy of 20 kilometers. It's a very long day. Long

Vikram Chalana: day. Do you, do you listen to music or podcasts or what? What's your walking routine like?

Sean Weisbrot: It depends. Sometimes I just want to call people. Sometimes I'll listen to a podcast. Sometimes I don't want anything in my ears and I just wanna listen to the birds or to the tourists, squawking, or you know, listen to the buses, drive by and, yeah. It just depends on, on my mood at the moment. But yeah, I, I, I walk, I've already, I've already walked like 12 or 13,000 steps today. About, yesterday I did about 26,000. Yeah. It's funny, I, I sent a screenshot to my friend and it showed that I had walked, uh, it was like 12 kilometers at the time. And she's like, wow, that's great for, for a week. You've done fantastic. I go, no, that was today. And she's like, what? I was like, yeah, if you look for the entire week, I've done already close to 60. And she's like, what? That's crazy. Like yeah. I walk like 300 kilometers a month. My shoes only last like four or five months cause I've burned through the, the souls. That's awesome. Yeah. So it's cool that you got a, a healthcare routine. I've been to Seattle. I didn't really hike, but I went to Whidby Island, which is gorgeous. So I had a little bit of island time.

Vikram Chalana: Yeah. I was

Sean Weisbrot: actually in Seattle in June for a friend's wedding. Oh.

Vikram Chalana: Oh, that's, and that's, that's a nice time this year. June was very nice. Uh, yes. Generally June is, is, uh, unpredictable. Usually July and August are beautiful, but, uh, yeah, global warming has been good for Seattle.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. So what's the most important thing you've learned in life so far?

Vikram Chalana: The importance of connections and community and how much that can make you happy. So I feel happiness comes from not just individual accomplishments. But from connections and a community that you built around you.