Quinten Farmer Profile
Quinten Farmer

@quintendf

Followers
3K
Following
4K
Media
276
Statuses
6K

founder, https://t.co/WGZYTruUNF

Joined February 2010
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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
9 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
@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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
10 days
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
2 months
Lots of alpha in this for any creative thinking about AI as more than a tool . lucky to work with Eliot every day.
@eliotpeper
Eliot Peper
2 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
2 months
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.
@benhylak
ben
2 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
3 months
Great interview w/ @ajaymehta on the emotional design thinking behind @tolanworld.
@ajaymehta
Ajay Mehta
3 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
3 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
3 months
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.
@danshipper
Dan Shipper 📧
3 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
3 months
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.
@soleio
Soleio
3 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
3 months
My cofounder @ajaymehta is one of the best consumer growth thinkers out there - has been fun to watch him cook since we launched Tolan :).
@ajaymehta
Ajay Mehta
3 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
4 months
Very excited for this.
@nayafia
Nadia Asparouhova
4 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
4 months
:).
@benhylak
ben
4 months
really beautiful app. any designer would be lucky to join their team
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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
4 months
Our concepts channel is my favorite part of slack. some fun Tolan home ideas from @lucas_zanotto
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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
4 months
we love Dawn at Tolan :).
@benhylak
ben
4 months
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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@quintendf
Quinten Farmer
4 months
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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