Storytelling and the Art of Persuasion in the Age of AI with Tome Co-Founder & CEO, Keith Peiris

SEASON 3, EPISODE 5

STORYTELLING AND THE ART OF PERSUASION IN THE AGE OF AI WITH TOME CO-FOUNDER & CEO, KEITH PEIRIS

AI like ChatGPT and DALL·E 2 is raising important questions about human creativity. Will AI one day replace us as creators and storytellers? Keith Peiris believes AI can boost creativity rather than hinder it – and he’s built a platform to do just that. Keith is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tome, an AI-powered storytelling and presentation platform that lets anyone turn their ideas into stories and presentations within seconds – from fundraising pitches and sales proposals to landing pages and classroom presentations. He joins the podcast to explain how Tome helps anyone tell compelling stories that convey ideas and persuade others. A former product leader at Instagram, Keith traces Tome’s origins from the start of the pandemic – releasing early prototypes to friends and launching on Product Hunt – to going viral and reaching 10 million users in the months after ChatGPT was released. He shares how, as Tome has scaled, he and his co-founder, Henri Liriani, have balanced using off-the-shelf LLM models with proprietary technology. And, he discusses why critical thinking remains an essential and enduring human skill, even with increasingly intelligent generative AI.

“There's so much content on the internet. You have to know: is this credible? Do I believe this? Do I buy where this comes from? And I think that's going to be the new skill. Can you have great taste? Can you be discerning? Can you be a critical thinker? Can you wield AI in a way where it helps you be productive instead of creating a bunch of regurgitated content? It's a new type of creativity and a new type of competency that we all need to develop.”

Keith PeirisCo-Founder and CEO, Tome

What drove Tome’s early customer acquisition strategy, and the value of early product idea validation through rapid prototyping and user feedback
What Keith’s experience working in social media at Meta him about scaling and the way people use products (and what it taught him NOT to do, too)
Deciding how to balance the use of existing models like GPT-3 versus developing proprietary technology
How Tome trains and tunes its models and optimizes its product using the most persuasive texts in history (think: MLK’s speech, Airbnb’s pitch deck) along with 5 billion monthly user edits

Advice for founders who are trying to fundraise at any venture stage (hint: be mentally prepared for getting the door slammed in your face hundreds of times!)
Keith’s experience as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Greylock, and what he learned about blitzscaling from Tome board member Reid Hoffman
Why critical thinking, good taste, and discernment remain essential in the era of information overload, even with the help of powerful generative AI tools
Tome’s long-term vision and strategy to become the default tool for creating any digital storytelling artifact

STORYTELLING AND THE ART OF PERSUASION IN THE AGE OF AI WITH TOME CO-FOUNDER & CEO, KEITH PEIRIS

STORYTELLING AND THE ART OF PERSUASION IN THE AGE OF AI WITH TOME CO-FOUNDER & CEO, KEITH PEIRIS

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