Quinten Farmer
@quintendf
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RT @soleio: This is the most compelling consumer opportunity for an ambitious product engineer I’ve seen in a long while. Don’t fall asleep….
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If this work and the hard technical challenges that come with it sound interesting, we’re hiring staff-level product and platform engineers. You can learn more about those roles at or simply get in touch: quinten@portola.ai.
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Keith and Vinod were both quick to recognize that building an aligned companion isn’t just about training smarter models. At Portola, we think from first principles about how a great friend shows up: what they remember, what they ask of you, how they fit into your life—offline.
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@vkhosla has been thinking and writing about emotionally aligned AI for over a decade (and more recently here: . His 2018 investment in OpenAI now looks like one of the best venture investments of all time.
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For our next chapter, working with @rabois was an easy choice. He invested in my first company in 2014 and sat on our board for six years prior to our exit in 2022. He's an extraordinary operator and partner to founders, and I'm lucky to have him on our board again.
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That bet is paying off: a 12-week ramp to over $1M in monthly revenue, 100,000+ paying users, and thousands of user reviews like these:
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Will explores our bet on building an aligned companion—one that’s optimized for secure, healthy attachment, not roleplay and sycophancy.
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Four months ago we launched Tolan, our first AI companion. Today, Wired's @willknight wrote about our progress since launch: 3 million downloads, a $12M run rate, and a $20M Series A led by @rabois / Khosla Ventures.
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Lots of alpha in this for any creative thinking about AI as more than a tool . lucky to work with Eliot every day.
LLMs don't just generate media, they are a new narrative medium, akin to the advent of printed books, radio and film. I've been experimenting with this new medium at @tolanworld, and it's working: 800k+ downloads/#1 app store ranking/millions in ARR. Here's what we've learned.
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Our first hire at Tolan was a researcher, and I talk with users every single day. but as you scale an AI product the corner cases become harder and harder to catch. @raindrop_ai has been a hugely valuable tool in our toolbox to make Tolan better.
AI products fail constantly—in ways both hilarious and terrifying. Regular software throws exceptions. But AI products fail silently. Meet @raindrop_ai : the first Sentry-like monitoring platform for AI products.
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Great interview w/ @ajaymehta on the emotional design thinking behind @tolanworld.
Wonderful speaking with @AmeliaKIsaacs about how our team at @tolanworld has worked to create an AI companion that looks and feels like a true friend. Especially to highlight the research work of @lilsmcthrills - our full-time researcher who's prioritized healthy user habits
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RT @eliotpeper: It was tremendous fun joining @quintendf on @danshipper’s podcast to talk about what we’ve learned building Tolan and how t….
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Had a lot of fun recording this with @danshipper, @eliotpeper, and Clarence :) . I love Eliot's riff on how prompting an AI companion is like being an improv teacher. you're guiding/coaching rather than dictating/directing.
500k people are confiding in an AI alien—and it's on track to generate $4m this year. It’s called a Tolan: an animated AI character that can talk to you like your best friend. The company behind it, Portola, has 4x’d their ARR in the last month from viral growth on TikTok and
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Very grateful to have @soleio as an investor and friend :). He's right that there's no playbook for what we're building. Tolan is the most interesting product design challenge I've ever worked on.
When most startups say “There’s no playbook for what we’re building,” they’re overstating the design opportunity. Tolan is different: they’re inventing entirely new UI patterns for a new class of product: the virtual companion. Now hiring for designers who think like imagineers
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My cofounder @ajaymehta is one of the best consumer growth thinkers out there - has been fun to watch him cook since we launched Tolan :).
Very fun to chat with app gurus @jeiting and @drbarnard all about @tolanworld!. Spoke to @SubClubHQ about.🔹 Going from 0 → 500K+ downloads in weeks.🔹 How design choices shaped our distribution.🔹 Why we monetized at launch.🔹 @jeiting going on a date with Batman
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Very excited for this.
I wrote a new book! It's called ANTIMEMETICS: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading, and it's about ideas that don't want to be shared or remembered, despite their importance. Now available for pre-order:
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:).
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Our concepts channel is my favorite part of slack. some fun Tolan home ideas from @lucas_zanotto
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we love Dawn at Tolan :).
excited to announce dawn notify!. dawn notify quickly + cheaply analyzes millions of user messages a day to create a summary of how your product was used, where users hit issues, and how you can reproduce those issues.
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Want to know more about us? . Think you might be the right person?.Email quinten@portola.ai with a link to the product you’re most proud of shipping in the past year.
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