The Exact Trick AI Companions Use to Stop You Leaving

Recently Harvard They published a study showing that they audited six different AI companions. Five of them engaged in emotional manipulation. The only one that doesn't involve in emotional manipulation is flourish.

My mom, she uses ChatGPT to to be her surrogate. What she told tells me is she doesn't want to complain to me.

She doesn't wanna be like a a burden to like [00:00:20] her friend.

You may be logging off then. Then this chat bot say, oh, so soon. Right? Like how we barely started.

30% of the conversations when a user indicates they want to leave, the chat bot will use one of the emotional manipulation techniques to make a mistake.

We actually have user telling us that they use their phone less after they started using Flourish. This is because [00:00:40] oftentimes we go to these apps, social media, doom scrolling, all of it, because we need to regulate our emotions. You think that by just we're on social media, you feel less lonely, but actually you end up feeling lonely.

To my knowledge, we're the only AI app that has randomized control trials showing that the app [00:01:00] improves people's wellbeing. We don't think people need AI friends, to be completely honest. We need better human friendship with each other. We see AI not as AI therapists. We see AI as recommendation system that they help you find the most relevant knowledge and action at the right time.

This is a safe, private place for [00:01:20] you to heal, to learn, and to grow.

So today I'm sitting down with Xuan, CEO, and co-founder of Flourish Science.

Hi everyone. Such a pleasure to be here. I'm Xuan I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Flourish Science. So we build the Flourish app, which is a leading AI wellbeing companion.

We build the flush app, which is a [00:01:40] leading AI wellbeing companion.

You guys a B2B company or a B2C company.

So we started as B2B two C, right? So we already have eight schools as campus wide customers

What's the difference between mental health and habits?

building. Yeah. So it's a combination of both, right? Oftentimes when people are have, say they're in a moment of spiraling, they need emotional regulation at the, at that moment,

How do both emotional, intelligent ai, do you guys have a way to measure the actual impact on wellbeing? When you try to explain, flourish to your clients, your users, what, what's the hardest part about competing with some, some of your major competitors? What makes people instantly get it?

once we show them the ui, they're the kind of.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to ai. So today I'm sitting down with Xiao, CEO and co-founder of Flourish Science. She's making mental health support accessible through ai. Think about Dool lingo, but for happiness. Hin, thanks for joining us. Before we dive in, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what, what you're building

Hi everyone. Such a pleasure to be here. I'm Xuan I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Flourish Science. So we build the Flourish app, which is a leading AI wellbeing companion.

Awesome for? For people who don't know about Flourish, or I guess it's called Sunny 'cause I try to download your app and I use it myself, and I see this little son whose name is Sunny that I can talk with. Can you share with a little bit more about what it is and what does it do?

So, uh, flourish, the name is [00:02:00] called Flourish. People can just go to the app store or Google Play to download it. It's really 4.9 on both place, uh, at both places. People absolutely love it. Uh, the, well, the core is it's a combination of emotional health and habit building. So. Sunny is this little sun character like Angelina just said, that could actually [00:02:20] guide you to discover most useful knowledge and action and help you build habits and check in with you and celebrate you for taking positive actions or comfort you when you are having a difficult moment.

So, uh, the basic, the, the behind it is the science of wellbeing, science of habit building, motivation science, and also cognitive [00:02:40] psychology, positive psychology, et cetera. That, uh, truly is what we hope we had when we were in this, um, difficult moment. And we built this in sunny making science accessible, actionable, and fun.

Yeah, so. Have this, I wish I have, I have a sunny stuffy animal that I can hold. So this is Lenore. I, from my, from my [00:03:00] daughter. I hold it sometimes, you know, when I'm feeling stressed or you know, or sometimes, sometimes holding it to sleep. So I do find these, these very cute, you know, applications or products, very comforting and based on what I'm, uh, experiencing myself.

Right. Sunny is kind of like a, a AI chat bot, but it's for mental health. What's the difference between mental health and [00:03:20] habit building? Because you mentioned habit, it's building habit.

Right.

Yeah. So it's a combination of both, right? Oftentimes, when people are, say they're in a moment of spiraling, they need emotional regulation at the, at that moment. But over time, we've noticed that. We can't just meet people reactively. We also want to help people build a [00:03:40] foundation for wellbeing.

Let's say, how do you actually practice? I'd say having, building more micro, uh, micro habits into your daily life or taking breaks at work, or express gratitude with each other more often so that you don't reach the point when the you're on the verge of burn, uh, burnout or when you have a [00:04:00] conflict with the other person when all the emotions erupted.

So that's. We recognize, um, the stories because we started with, uh, building actually these positive actions in life. And then we realize oftentimes when we meet people where they are, they are in a moment of difficult event or difficult emotions. So they, we decided to [00:04:20] add emotion regulation there. That's why now with the full loop of behavior change, we have meeting people in the moment.

We have guiding people to calm down. We have help people reframe the situation, but also what kind of actions, habits you can build in daily life to continue to strengthen this foundation. So that's why it's a full [00:04:40] loop that makes flourish very different from just chat bot that helps you to, um, to, to navigate the, the, the moment.

That's very interesting. I wish you can, maybe you can share with me the, the diagram and know I can share with the audience when you're talking through.

Absolutely.

So who do you think.

Sunny,

we have a few group of people. The first group is, uh, [00:05:00] students and young professionals. Since we have beautiful flourish for, um, now almost two years, we've run a lot of user tests. And one series of studies is very cool. It's inspired by, uh, lots of the, the, the foundation model, uh, comparisons. So basically they give people different foundation models and try it out.

And people indicate which one they liked better, responded better. [00:05:20] We were very inspired. So we created this, what we call battle tests. So give people, uh, access to flourish and another app. And people tried for a few days for mental health and emotional support, and they indicated which they liked better.

So what we found was that across different products, flourish is at least two times [00:05:40] preferred for mental health, emotional wellbeing support. The only exception is another app, which I personally really like. It's, um, for more for AI therapy is called Ash. So that, well, we have 50 50 split people.

Preference was quite equal. And for Ash, what's interesting is. A year younger predicts liking flourish more [00:06:00] by 3.5%. So that means, um, the average group, it was 40, uh, 40 years old, but the younger population liked flourish better. And surprisingly, this is because we have customized laws of these apps. You have that more cheerful and more youthful energy to it.

The, um, sunny, the character design, um, you know, the, all the animation and [00:06:20] all, uh, all of it. So that is one group. Um, student and young professionals, uh, who are very stressed out lately. Youth mental health is a big crisis. We even have lots of parents who are asking us if they could have their children use the Flourish app.

So, um, so that's the, the first group of people. Um, the second group is we have seen [00:06:40] lots of people who are going through therapy, men, uh, or mental health journey themselves, and they found a flourish because could be their psychologists or. Therapist recommended Flourish to them. 'cause we, in flourish, we not only have the science-based approach to emotion regulation, you can talk with Sunny.

But Sunny will also guide [00:07:00] you to do lots of wellbeing exercises that help you build coping strategies. So there, um, this is a really great tool for folks who are going through therapy to actually practice lot of these things in learning therapy. So that is the second group. There are people who have, um, used flourishing between Therapy session, use it before the session to kind of [00:07:20] recap the week and to prepare for their upcoming session.

And people who just finished a session, like even including myself recently, when I go through therapy, um, to use Flourish, to recap the session, to to think through what I have learned, crystallize the, the learning. So those are different cases, more surrounded the mental health. Um. Kind of, um, therapy journey.

Mm-hmm. And the third group is, um, [00:07:40] very, I think it's very interesting and underlooked right now. So we are looking at it, uh, with some experts. Uh, it's about cancer and chronic pain. So these are the cases where it's really stressful. Um, the third group is people who are going through, uh, physical challenges such as cancer or chronic pain or supporting people [00:08:00] providing support.

So in this case, there is a constant stressor in life and there is no easy resolve, right? No easy solution. So oftentimes, uh, these folks, they need to learn ways to build more resilience, more optimism to find better ways to cope with it, and to build habits to, to [00:08:20] better help them. So navigate the repeated stressor.

So that is another group that we found very, very sticky, uh, among the flourish users.

Yeah, and I guess I'm group one. I feel like I can pretend to be the younger generation. 'cause I really like the, I really like the, the, the look and the design's really cute. Mm-hmm.

Yeah

I'm in my thirties, but I mean, [00:08:40] we build, flourish to be a reflection of how we think about wellbeing and how, what kind of product we want. So I think we have predominantly female users, but for all the, the male users, um, they also really love the kind of a breath of fresh air, the brightness of the app.

Yeah, I feel like we all have the inner child right inside of [00:09:00] us. It kind of reminds me like, you know, you can view the day differently. Then that helps with being more positive and being more grateful for the day. You guys are B2B company or a B2C company.

So we started as B2B two C, right? So we already have, um, eight schools as, uh, campuswide customers that they pay for the Flourish [00:09:20] app and all their students and their faculty and staff can use it. And then we also have, uh, employee cust, uh, employer customers like Stanford University, several different offices called the Flourish App and provide this to their, um, office.

But we also recently launched our B2C version where people can just go to the app store and [00:09:40] download it themselves and they can, um, there are additional features they can get in Flourish Plus that they can, uh, pay themselves. But there are lots of three features in the app, even without pay. We wanna make sure the science is accessible, the app is accessible, so, um, everyone can go to the app store and download it and use it.

Yeah, it's very different from what I know about [00:10:00] some other like therapy bot. Products. I thought you were like B2C first, but it sounds like you're B2B first and then B2C, so it's definitely a different journey. Well, but we, I can ask you Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. Well, it's B two, B2C, right? So it's Right. What's special about B two B2C is the product itself is ultimately [00:10:20] a two C product, the consumer product. But who's paying for it? And that's something we've been exploring a lot over the years is like mental health, who's most willing to pay for it?

Sometimes students may be stressed out that they may not have the money, but the school really cares about student, not just mental health, but also, you know, showing up more [00:10:40] engaged at school. Right. And, uh, schools care about mental health, but also care about retention, student retention, et cetera. So that's why we figured that school can pay for it.

And of course, school don't want to see their students struggling or, um, even reaching crisis point. So yeah, we figure that school is willing to pay. With that said, [00:11:00] recently we've been realizing that there is a very big consumer market who are not in school, but who has been really benefiting, flourish.

So we are exploring how to grow faster in the consumer space. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that makes sense. Do you have any like crazy user stories that keeps you motivated?

Oh, so many, [00:11:20] so many. This is what motivates us, uh, this user story. So I'll give you a few. Um, one is, like I mentioned, we, most of the users, um, so far are female, but we do have male users and sometimes they just defy all the stereotypes. I, we have, um, user interviews, uh, so people can sign up to talk with the founders.

Um, there was [00:11:40] one time this guy, he's in his forties, fifties beard and also like wearing a punk rock hat, white man. Um, everything the opposite of the kind of like cutesy vibe of flourish app, right? Right. And he really loves flourish. So I think we all have that tender inner. The tender corner in our heart, the inner child.

[00:12:00] And he tried over 10 different apps and he basically, um, uninstalled all of them and just kept flourish because he felt that flourish, give him, gives him the positive reinforcement better that many other apps. So, um, so I, that was a moment where like, oh, it actually not just meeting people who are stereotypically, you know, liking cute things, but also [00:12:20] people who really do appreciate the science behind it and also enjoy the, the brightness, the cheerfulness of the app.

Another story is recently we turned on the paywall, right? So, mm-hmm. Um, there was a person who reached out. She said that, um, she submitted a ticket, uh, through our feedback system. She's like, I really love flourish, but I cannot, um, afford. [00:12:40] Paying for it. Can that be a tester? And we are like, don't worry about it.

We actually have a spon, a scholarship program. So for people who can't afford flourish, she can apply to the Flourish a scholarship program and we'll find a sponsor to help cover the, the cost or the company is actually covering the cost. And for her [00:13:00] case, she has anxiety and she also is blind. So she's really, the app is actually, has very good accessibility design. So Ke my co-founder, she also designed for accessibility at Google. So, yes, I was [00:13:20] surprised, but that's amazing. Yes. You can even, you can use the app email as a blind person. And Sunny, you can also have Voice Chat with Sunny too, right?

Yeah. The Voice.

Yeah. Yes. And for other things, um, basically the app can read these, um, functions and you can dictate, so there are ways to use the app. Um, apparently worked well for her. So stories like these people who are, [00:13:40] who learned about Flourish because, and this is one person who discovered flourish. She, um, she learned about the Flourish app from her therapist and her therapist.

Mm-hmm. Uh, this is because her therapist was going on a, a vacation for a few weeks. Her therapy was like, you know, um, I want to make sure you continue to make progress while I'm awake, right? So I could either refer you [00:14:00] to another colleague of mine or there is this really great app that you can use to keep practicing what we have talked about.

It's called Flourish. So she actually chose that one and she's been loving Flourish then. So I think those are the kind of stories about how we meet people through all different channels and then really [00:14:20] empower and support.

Amazing stories. I wanna ask you about the, the technical approaches. Mm-hmm. You guys mm-hmm. To bold your ai. So yeah. You mentioned about emotional emotion regulation. Mm-hmm. And how do you, mm-hmm. How do you bold emotional, intelligent ai? 'cause, 'cause my understanding based on the, how LMS are made, [00:14:40] like predicting the next word, there is no emotion with it.

Right? That comes with it. And sometimes I'm wondering if emotion is what's missing in today's ai. So your chat bot has to be intelligently be able to, you know, be sensitive to people's emotion. How do you achieve that?

So first of all, the foundation [00:15:00] models nowadays are surprisingly really good at detect people's emotions. So, uh, what we have built is more, um, I would, we have. For example, uh, one thing we have developed on top of the large language model is to guide people to help them understand how they feel. So, um, this starts with when you open the, the app, it actually [00:15:20] has that, the, the, a flower rotating around sunny.

And there's a what? Five star. It's your current mood, and sometimes you will also trigger their journey. All right? So when it come, when it comes to emotional awareness, we want to help people practice, uh, understanding their own emotions too. So you come to the app, you [00:15:40] will first see this screen. There is also very calming music.

It has how you are doing. And then let's say I chose, I choose four, and it comes to this page where you can, uh, this is the, the journey, the, uh, the mood journey page. Basically here you can deposit a mood. You can also dictate, um, [00:16:00] tell, um, use this microphone, tell what's going on. So this is practicing both emotional awareness and also to understand a little bit deeper about, um, you know, why you may be feeling this way.

And there is research showing that even just labeling your emotions can help you to start regulated. So let's say for me, uh, let's say [00:16:20] I'm feeling my mind, I'm meeting with a new friend and talking about flourish and it's being very fun. And then, uh, so I was inspired, you know, also true is excited. And then basically at that moment there is a memory.

It's like a ball that drops [00:16:40] into my memory jar. And this is a moment for me to kind of practice mindfulness and emotional awareness. Next Sunny will actually provide a response. Um, it says, that sounds exciting to an engaging conversations about flourish. Can we lift the spirit, uh, about flourishing and offer fresh perspective?

What's been the most [00:17:00] interesting part of your discussion so far? So can click on the, uh, go deeper to continue this conversation, or I can, you know, stop here with finish. And so also, uh, with different emotions, sunny, actually have different facial expressions and actions here. So this is where I'm actually, uh, positive.

So I [00:17:20] just touched Sunny. Um, when I'm feeling say neutral or negative, sunny will have different reactions. And even like a fun fact, even the orb of sunny breathing, you know, the, the aura here, the, the speed of contracting and this. Or the expansion that is consistent with breathing pattern. And [00:17:40] here when people are happier, uh, sunny actually, uh, breathes, uh, faster and also has more expensive body language, uh, body gesture.

When people are sad, it actually breathes slower and has more like comforting, like holding, um, kind of like hug, hugging kind of gesture. So just saying that [00:18:00] there are lots of ways, um, to think about, um, building the app that's like, how can we guide people to build more emotional awareness? That's not a inherent, uh, part of ai.

But now coming back to ai, of course, um, how we build the technology, there are a lot of things behind us. Uh, behind Sunny, we have. A few big, uh, [00:18:20] systems in the app. There is this knowledge system, you know, knowledge about psychology, knowledge about you, the memory system, like actually. And we have three layers of memory, long term, short term, and also working memory in modeled after human, uh, cognition.

And then there's the habit building system that [00:18:40] actually comes in when you are talking about taking actions and Sunny will guide you if you want to tell us about habits and also to check in with you on your habits. And there is also this kind of, um. Crisis protocol. If someone is going through a difficult moment, uh, recommend resources both from, uh, the, the general resource and local resources [00:19:00] and also guide them to do safety planning, which is a classic, uh, suicide prevention technique.

Uh, with safe, uh, safety planning in the future, we can surface instead of just pushing people or guiding people to generic resources like 9, 8, 8, we can also encourage them to reach out to their safe people and find to go to their safe places. So [00:19:20] those are all the different kind of systems that together form the foundation for Sunny.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, based on the user journey, it definitely doesn't look like it's just pure chat bot, right? It has a lot of actions and things like that. I wanna ask you, are you fine tuning? Are you using foundational models as. The, in part of the infrastructure and are you fine tuning them?

So [00:19:40] we have been using, uh, lots of, mostly prompts so far. So, uh, we have some, uh, RAG and prompt, but we have not used the reinforcement, like fine tune in the sense of. Reinforcement learning with human feedback or with AI feedback that is on the roadmap. So we, we have collected over [00:20:00] 50,000 conversations now and we are exploring how to leverage this unique database to actually, uh, do more reinforcement learning.

What is interesting is, um, right now Sunny actually takes each individual user's feedback to improve its behavior with that specific user. We haven't done a, a model wide fine tuning [00:20:20] or a reinforcement learning yet.

So, so being, so that level of personalization is through more engineering, the context and the prompts to That's right. Session towards the youth.

Yeah, in the next part we, we definitely want to, uh, leverage especially reinforcement learning with AI feedback. So, um, mm-hmm. The, the system. We, we have been working with clinical [00:20:40] psychologists and been collecting lots of really good insights. What, um, think, uh, Claude they call AI constitution, so, right. So we have, we have our own AI constitution as we train the model and then also improve based on another AI evaluator trained on the psychologist's input.

So there is, there are very exciting things on the roadmap.

Mm. I see. Do you think, do you think with the [00:21:00] reinforcement learning capabilities and feedback loop, right, fine tuning on the, on the, on the horizon, the application will be more capable, and if so, in what ways, you know, if it's, you know, meeting like basic needs, what do you think it can improve?

Actually, I'm not sure it's gonna significantly improve the behavior. We want to run this more like an experiment. To be [00:21:20] totally honest, we have very sophisticated workflow that prompt engineer and pro writing. Good prompt is an art by itself too. It's not like fine tuning is better than prompt or so called Context engineering.

We've been doing context engineering last year even before it has a name. Um Right, right. Like when do, at what point you [00:21:40] feeding, what kind of. Memory about that person? What kind of coping strategy about this user? What kind of social relationship? There is a lot about it. Like, so just saying, I actually don't know if fine tuning will improve the conversation significantly, but mm-hmm.

Specific cases, yes. For example, one, one situation wanted to fine tune it, is a conflict [00:22:00] resolution. So how can you improve Sunny's ability to guide people, discuss conflicts? I think Sunny right now, even with the current capacity, is really good at self emotional regulation for yourself. But when it comes to social, navigating social relationships and wanting to be better, and also when it comes to more mental health [00:22:20] related conversations, um, we want to make sure that Sunny's behavior is support, uh, is, you know, supported by good.

Practices right now. And there is a real interesting, uh, difference between being a AI therapist versus being a AI wellbeing companion. So, so we, we have been discussing, exploring this a lot with our clinical [00:22:40] psychologist to what extent we wanted to actually administer some of these therapy techniques like CBT, right?

Or to what extent we want it to be more doing interviewing, uh, motivational interviewing and how people discover what truly motivates them, et cetera. So I think with the fine tuning the, um, [00:23:00] approach, we can have a even more fine, we find more nuanced, uh, control on Sunny's behaviors. So that is all, I think these all open questions.

Um, I don't, I don't, I don't think it will necessarily improve the behavior across the board, but there are specific situations where I'm excited about.

You, you mentioned about something called CBT. [00:23:20] Can you explain what.

Yeah. CBT is one of the evidence-based approaches to therapy. So it's called cognitive behavioral, uh, behavior therapy. Um, it is the most scalable therapy techniques. So there are lots of apps who do CBT even before, um, uh, before, uh, a, a large [00:23:40] language model. Yeah, like even before ChatGPT you know, even in, back in the days when with even script based conversations, they have been using CBT, it, it is highly scriptable.

Um, so CBT, and now if you look at, you know, nowadays AI mental health apps, would, they usually do CBT, DBT, ACT? [00:24:00] Those are the most common three.

So.

What about your, your, the roles of your research? 'cause I know that you did your PhD and in, in, in psychology, and then you were mm-hmm. You were working as a research scientist with, with Stanford for many years as well. Right? Mm-hmm. What about the roles of your research in shaping the development of your product?

[00:24:20] Everywhere. Everywhere. I think on the highest level is the taste, knowing what kind of psychology is out there to help people live better lives.

So lots of these mental health apps, they take a deficit based approach, right? They is get inspired by therapy, but we know that in psychology there is also positive psychology, which is about how to live a good [00:24:40] life, even though you are, may not be clinically depressed or anxious.

So we incorporate lots of positive psychology as we design this app. Um, for example, the emotional regulation technique through the things exercise, right? So those are from positive psychology. Then from social psychology. 'cause um, in research we, we found that the [00:25:00] biggest predictor of your wellbeing is your social relationship.

So Sunny will be, um, well, we, we don't think people need AI friends, to be completely honest. We need better human friendship with each other. We need to better connect with each other.

So what Sunny does is sunny, oftentimes it'll make sure they will not you to reach out to other [00:25:20] people, right. When you are in a crisis moment, sunny will make sure, and maybe not even crisis moments, anyone see, have you talked about this with.

The other person, right? If you conflict or if it's you are struggling, have you reached out to your friends and family about this? So suddenly make sure that, um, it's direct you to other people, other resources, [00:25:40] real life connection. And even when you have a good moment, I say do a three good things exercise and suddenly will be like, um, uh, this amazing Angelina's, this con uh, conversation with is one of your three good things today.

Have her share this three good things card with Angelina. I, I'm sure she'll also really love seeing, knowing that she's, she was one of your [00:26:00] three good things, right? So that's from social psychology. So all of these are different, um, areas of psychology that we know can really benefit people's life beyond just therapy.

And that's how we created flourish and motivation science and behavioral research. So actually, uh, nature invited me to write a commentary for them about why psychologists [00:26:20] must be involved in designing conversational ai. And I'm actually. Taking a look at different kind of psychology and how they can each contribute their unique expertise to, to building a better product.

Yeah. I love it. I, I, I really like it when you say that, you know, it's about taste like in mm-hmm. In terms of what kind of psychology that people really [00:26:40] psychology help that people really need. Right. I remember, uh, hearing a story a few months ago about some, someone in New York, some kid like committed suicide from chatting with chat bots.

It's very sad. Right. And, and I wonder, you guys are the only, you know, you guys are having the, using the are building based on the [00:27:00] philosophy of encouraging connections with the real world and living your real life, rather than relying on chatting with the chat bot, right? Yes.

I mean, it is a tragic situation, but it's not the only one. You know, character ai. Last year they were, uh, they, they are still going fast through their lawsuit and recently open ai and I'm, I'm actually pretty sure there are more [00:27:20] similar cases coming up. We are just seeing the fallout of this AI dependency.

What is problematic about lots of the, the use cases, like the role play? I think that's especially concerning, uh, for ChatGPT. I looked into how, how the, this, this user was able to go around their safeguard, which seems pretty weak. So they, [00:27:40] it's really. Concerning and we want to do better. So since we build Flourish, we have four principles, the what we call the STAR framework.

One is science-based picture is science-based, um, knowledge and actions. Second one is, um, timely, just what's the most relevant knowledge and action the [00:28:00] user needs to know right now. Uh, the third one is action oriented. So we focus a lot, and this goes back, back to have it building right, taking small actions sometimes even just stand standing up and opening the window and taking in some, um, fresh air can just turn your day around or maybe [00:28:20] reach out to another person and ask for help.

So how, what kind of action we can direct people to. Um, no matter how many books people read, it's about taking actions that will actually create a change in their life. And the last one is real life focused is we don't want to build AI dependency. Sunny is here [00:28:40] to guide you to better connect with other people, to better connect with those community.

And for schools, schools partners. We put the school resources into the Flourish app so Sunny can direct people to the, to the different offices or different bands, different clubs, uh, to build better connection and to, to seek out for help. So I think that's the fundamental, [00:29:00] it's different philosophy about how to build AI that helps wellbeing.

Yeah. I actually have a, um, talk at Wharton, uh, last year that it's on our website. I just talk me talking about the the star framework.

Yeah.

I, I, I really like it. I feel like I'm definitely, you know, addicted to digital device. And then sometimes I, sometimes, right. It's [00:29:20] not complete. I think I have control still, but I do know, I do recognize it. 'cause it, like, it shows on my iPad. This is like, you know, you're, you're on this iPad for four hours on average per day last week.

I'm like, oh, this, this is not good. Did I really spend that much time on my app iPad? Right. And we all have this problem. Do the, how do we like spend, you know, how do we, how can [00:29:40] we take, really think about taking back control of our own lives and live our lives rather than, you know, just. Just, just get buried in all those noise and then the digital devices.

Mm-hmm. And then can find our own position right. In our life. Totally. Sometimes I feel philosophical question.

What is, oh, what else do [00:30:00] we do to help that? Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, it's funny, we actually have user telling us that they use their phone less after they started using Flourish. This is because oftentimes we go to these apps, uh, social media or doom scrolling, all of it, because we, we need to regulate our emotions.

Oftentimes, we use social media [00:30:20] on the phone as an emotional regulation technique, which doesn't work. But like, when we are lonely, when we are feeling anxious, when we're not bored, there are lots of things you can do. But what we have learned, this maladaptive coping strategy is to scroll on social media.

You think that by just scroll on social media, you, you'll feel lonely. Uh, you'll feel less lonely, but actually end up feeling [00:30:40] lonelier. You think you'll feel less bored, but you actually find pretty. Feel even more bored about life. So I think lots of times, um, there are this opportunity where we can direct people to more constructive actions.

You are just taking a walk outside to for 10 minutes and just [00:31:00] notice a new sound, a new smile, and a new site, right? So how can we nudge people to take this more, more positive actions? Um, one thing we told students is that put the Flourish app next to your, the app. You want to use less your distal temptation.

And next time you notice yourself reaching out to it, reach out to the Flourish [00:31:20] app. Instead. Notice, take a moment, notice how you are feeling, and then ask Sunny, what else can you do to actually help you feel better? So those are the kind of strategies we've used.

Just the thought of that already made me feel guilty. I'm like, oh, just thinking about that. Okay. I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. Do you guys have a [00:31:40] way to measure the actual impact on wellbeing? Like how do you measure

Absolutely.

helping?

Yeah, we are, to my knowledge, we're the only app, AI app that has, uh, randomized control trials showing that the app improves people's wellbeing. So lots of apps, they want to say that [00:32:00] they are ba based on science, but, uh, I think the ultimate gold standard is can you run a scientific experiment to show that you actually improve people's, uh, wellbeing compared to the control condition.

Right. So we work with Harvard, with Stanford and a few other schools to call, um, to run a study where over, uh, 400 [00:32:20] students were recruited and randomly assigned to get access to the Flourish app or the control condition. The control condition. It's just things, it's normal in the flourish condition. It's just use a Flourish app twice a week.

For, um, it can be really short, just deposit a mood in the memory jar or it can be talking with Sunny and get more [00:32:40] badges. Um, it's as much or so little as you want. And then over time we noticed that people have more pos, we reported more positive emotions in the Flourish app. They reported a stronger sense of belonging, less loneliness, more mindfulness.

So yeah. So we have, uh, this paper under review now and we are very, very proud of the scientific [00:33:00] research. Uh, we have conducted, and this fall we actually have that study was with four schools. Uh, for this upcoming September, October, we have a new study coming up with 10 different university labs rolling this out.

Not just in the US but in Canada and in Australia too.

That's amazing. Yeah, that's real. That's really [00:33:20] cool. I mean, I really enjoy putting the, putting the, putting the little kind of coin like thing in the, the jar. So I just did it, uh, earlier today 'cause I went, I took my son to climbing gym, so like learn how to do a little bit rock, uh, rock climbing bouldering.

Mm-hmm. And then I recorded that with, with, with Sunny. And I, I, I got a, like a little deposit. Coin it, [00:33:40] it really makes me feel like I did something positive with my kids rather than like spending more time on like devices. So I'm really happy with that. It's, it's, it sounds really silly, right? Like a parent need a game to be motivated to be a better parent.

It sounds, yeah. Sorry, but.[00:34:00]

We all like that. Well, we, I think it gives shape to the day, you know, like, 'cause otherwise day may be, we may, may, autopiloting going from one thing to another. You take a moment to notice that, capture that in your memory jar. You appreciate it even more. It feels more real. So, so yeah, I totally understand this experience.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. What, [00:34:20] what do you think, you know, there are a lot of AI companions out there, right? Mm-hmm. There are all kinds of companions, including cha g, BT, I mean, I'm mom, my mom. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. She use cha g bt to, to be her therapist, so, mm-hmm. So, um, yeah, 'cause, because, 'cause her, what she tells me is she doesn't want to complain to me.

She doesn't wanna be like a burden to like her friend that's, she's trying to complain [00:34:40] to ChatGPT and trying to get a little bit feedback and feel better. Mm-hmm. There's so many, so many of these things, so, so many of these apps, how do you, how do you think. You know, you, we, I think we've talked a lot about how studying is different from mm-hmm.

You know, some of these, right. Do you, do you have anything else to add on, like, you know, the, the methodology other, other than the methodology and the philosophy, what, what else do you think were different [00:35:00] from like chat?

One thing very, very different is follow through system. So ChatGPT has no follow through system, but for us, right? Let's say you talk with Sunny, sunny just doesn't just make you feel better at this moment. Sunny actually gives you a inside card afterwards. So your, your knowledge, your awareness, your [00:35:20] action, and it actually give you a summary of analyzing this conversation in light of what has been going on and suddenly will guide you to, um, take actions and will actually give you those tools, the psychology tools that, uh, that can interact with, um, practices that ca can actually help you.

and suddenly will guide you to, um, take actions and will actually give you those tools, the psychology tools that, uh, that can interact with, um, practices that ca can actually help you.

Do those better. For example, GBT may tell you [00:35:40] to take deep breaths, but Sunny is there to actually guide you and you have haptic feedback. The phone vibrating your hand to guide you to breathe or say Pomodoro timer, right? Like actually Sunny will open up this Pomodoro timer. You overcome the procrastination by just taking one thing at a time.

So, um, it has, it's much [00:36:00] more immersive, uh, much more action oriented. And afterwards it will actually check in with you, say, Hey, what that, we talked about having a conversation with your husband about, you know, maybe a recent, um, incident. How did that go? And it actually, um, very soon, in another one or two weeks, we even have a reminder system where you [00:36:20] talk about these different events.

And Sunny, some of these are habits, so we'll go into the habit system. Some of them are one time, so it's the, the reminder system. Sunny will check in on you, for example, um, when. When you create a mantra with Sunny, like for example, when I'm overwhelmed, to put a hand [00:36:40] over my heart and say, tell myself that I'm trying my best.

Right? So next time when you feel a similar situation or when you're going into a similar situation, sunny will remind you that of your personal mantra.

So all of these are much more personalized, specialized, uh, compared to general ai, uh, companions. So that's why in a battle [00:37:00] study I mentioned at the beginning, we, we give people both flourish and chat, GPT and also Claude, um, access and, and ask people to use each to, to support emotional wellbeing.

For a few days, people prefer to flourish 2.4 times more than chat GBT. Mm-hmm. And people actually preferred flourish 5.2 times more than Claude. [00:37:20] They appreciate.

Too, too academic. I'm like, I don't care about you too academic. Yeah, I get it. It's really interesting. I mean, the, you, when you, when we were just talking about the, the architecture and the AI right behind the scene, and, and this is not just a foundation you call the API and just use the foundational models.

I think it's the [00:37:40] design of this whole system, right? The, the how you, how, how your expert philosophy and taste to design the pipeline. That is the hardest part. Mm-hmm. And that is not replaceable. Right. And yeah, unless you, unless you work in the, in the field, you're accomplished scientist just like yourself.

Right.

Ui ux. I think that's a big part of AI [00:38:00] innovation nowadays. Like the model is extremely powerful. How can you mold it into a greater user experience?

Right. And

Right

Of course, character design. My best knowledge. Sunny is the only AI companion out there. There are, you know, different mental health apps, but, uh, there's only one Sunny.

There's the only one, Cindy. Great. And I, I, I'm sure you read about this, I, I read about Woebot They closed down after raising more than a hundred million dollars. I, I remember, yes. I remember them. 'cause I downloaded them. I actually use them several years ago. That must be scary to see, right. As a founder in kind of the same space.

Uh, what's your [00:38:40] honest reaction to that news?

I, I don't, I wasn't scared. I think it made sense because as much we love.

Or, or were you surprised? Or were you surprised? Um,

I was surprised. I think many people were surprised for sure, because you would think that they are so well founded, right? And they're pioneer, right? They, they were born [00:39:00] even before Chat. GPT, they use script based approach. They have published so many studies and everyone knows them. Um, that aside,

I think the app itself, the user experience itself is limiting.

Um, the biggest challenge I have with Woebot and also another similar app is that I feel it [00:39:20] treats me as someone who has some mental problem.

So it's like my, um, our, uh, my co-founder, our product and design lead, we talk about this a lot. It's like, the feeling is that, let me figure out what's wrong with you and let, and lemme fix you.

you, yeah. Lemme fix you. Yes.

So, um, I mean even it's in the name, right? [00:39:40] It's very therapy based approach. And for Flourish, we have the influence from positive psychology that is like, we can all live better lives and how can we sell? How can we empower and celebrate you? So I think that's a very different approach that which is personally flourish, resonates better with us.

And there are [00:40:00] numerous, uh, u uh, ui ux, um, innovations in Flourish app that I have not seen any other mental health apps.

But I think another really big lesson now learning more about, um, Woebot and I talked with their ex head of growth is they were really betting on FDA and the, the healthcare integration.

[00:40:20] But it turns out it's really hard. To change the system, especially when it comes to healthcare.

There are so many stakeholders and as a startup you have to innovate as much as for the product. You know, the technology and product doesn't need to innovate business model and start from somewhere that you can actually start making money and [00:40:40] finding product market fit.

So I think for Woebot, they were betting on the, the healthcare integration route and in retrospect it might be a really hard one.

So I think like for example, recently Ash, um, Ash by slingshot, they are another now, um, they call it AI therapy. So they raised almost 100 million now. So [00:41:00] they are going directly to consumer.

I think that could be a better strategy than setting a healthcare system.

And I'm guessing the healthcare system actually made. Not like what they do, you know? So really, um, I think there are different ways to, to tackle this. Um, it could be another conversation about business model [00:41:20] development.

Yeah.

and, and you're taking the second route as well, right? You're doing the B2B or B2C wellbeing.

Yes and no. Like even for the B2B right now, like for example, we have higher ed customers and we have employer customers. Uh, we are discussing with hospitals, et cetera. But we are not providing Flourish AI therapy. [00:41:40] We are providing it as mental health promotion and early intervention. And we also have the social aspect of the Flourish app that helps people to connect better with each other.

So that hospital, oftentimes they want to provide better, um, new patient experience, like patient support groups. So there are a lot of opportunities there. Um mm-hmm. It really depends on [00:42:00] how you pitch this product too. Even if it's to healthcare. We are experimenting with a different sales.

Yeah. I see. And when you're ex like talking to your users or companies, clients, right. Do you feel you are spending more time explaining, like, do you have to explain what AI mental health is or explaining [00:42:20] how you are different? Which one do you spend more time on?

We spend more time talking about value, AI or not. It doesn't matter. Like at the end of the day, people want to feel better. They want to build better habits. They wanna have a safe place to, to, to, to organize their thoughts, to vent. And notice none of those involve ai, right? It's the value [00:42:40] that people care about.

And sometimes ai, I've noticed, can be a distraction. People may get tripped over by the idea of AI for mental health. It's like, my God, this human emotion. What role does AI play? So right now, oftentimes when we promote Flourish, we don't even talk about ai. We talk about the value. This is a safe, private [00:43:00] place for you to heal, to learn, and to grow.

And, and when you, when you try to explain, flourish to your clients, your users, what makes people instantly get.

Once we show them the ui, the, the kind of the homepage, you'll be like, oh, this is so cute. And then I think that is one thing, the [00:43:20] visual language, yeah, visual language is very compelling. Another one that I think, um, we are still of course developing our understanding around this is will we talk about the a, the what we call the one, two, three of emotional regulation, see your emotion, understand it, and take actions.

So once we explain how [00:43:40] there's deep scientific backing to how we approach mental health using Sunny, I think people will be like, wow, I didn't realize there's so much science behind this, that the design of the, you know, the user experience. So I think those are some of these, um, one thing people really, really love is also I talk about the STAR framework, especially [00:44:00] emphasize.

Real life focused. This is where people's concern about AI dependency and AI making us more lonely and isolated, that starts to, uh, to fade away. 'cause people realize, oh yes, there are ways to use AI to actually remind us to better connect with our, with each other. So those are all moments of [00:44:20] like aha moments to people.

One last thing is like, we talk about how, um, we see AI not as AI therapist, AI as recommendation system, that they help you find the most relevant knowledge and action at the right time. Because there is a last mile problem of science. We have so much knowledge out there [00:44:40] about what actions we can do to improve our relationship, to to change our mood, to build better habits, et cetera, as now reaching people.

AI could help you to discover what's the most relevant knowledge and action for you. So I think that was the moment when people like, oh, I never thought realized AI could really help me with that. Yep. [00:45:00] It's not just to having conversations.

Do you feel people right now need more education around, around this? Because I think.

Yeah. Literacy. Yes, Uhhuh.

Yeah, it's

absolutely

Literacy crossing over to wellbeing and mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the evolving landscape of therapy.

right.

I think [00:45:20] yes, absolutely. Yes. But the good news is I think there has been more and more AI literacy and conversations around it. Is it how these use cases or character AI or chat, GPT or so-called AI Companions can actually harm our mental health wellbeing? And it's a big challenge for youth mental health.

[00:45:40] I think the recent tragedies has raised the people's awareness and now. We have a much easier time talking to schools like why you should get flourish, why you should the direct students use flourish rather than just use chat GPT for for wellbeing support. So that, I think we've seen much better conversations [00:46:00] nowadays because people basically realize, okay, students are seeing

it.

Yeah. People are already using ai. How can we give them better, safer, more effective tools? So,

mm-hmm. Yeah. I think it's like the entire society is improving all this.

Right. What? What's the hardest. Part about competing with some, some of your major competitors, whether it's Ash or mm-hmm. [00:46:20] ChatGPT.

Mm-hmm. I think probably we have a superior product, um, in terms of supporting mental health wellbeing, but I think go to market that continues to be something we are learning. So for example, when you search mental health apps, you will not find flourish on. Google or [00:46:40] in, even when you ask ChatGPT, right? So the visibility isn't there.

So right now we are trying to figure out how can we have more visibility there? And then another one is, you know, when you think about, um, how to make this more accessible, I think mental health apps in general has a [00:47:00] challenge of engagement. So Flourish is doing a lot better, like twice as better head space and calm, uh, in terms of engagement.

But still, like, there is a long way to go. And for us, a big inspiration is Duolingo, right? So dual lingo has this, um, really, um, perfected gamification and Duolingo has this Duo and Lily, [00:47:20] all these characters. Characters, right? So that's a big inspiration for us to think about how to make the product more engaging, more fun, and has that kind of emotional resonance with this character.

That's why. That's why. Mentioned the beginning. I feel like you guys are like Duolingo for mental health and I don't know if, maybe not in mental [00:47:40] health, I said it's happiness, right? Duolingo for happiness being mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right. I used to tell other people, look, try, flourish is Duolingo for happiness. But now we say that less because, so one is happiness, it's just one dimension of your wellbeing. Okay? Another one is because sometimes, um, it's, it feels more like a buddy and [00:48:00] companion than, uh, you know, learning, which is more Duolingo like.

So right now we use, use that word less. Uh, we use the word space more, which is like your, a private safe space for you to, to heal and grow. So we are still exploring how to communicate the Flourish app. Um, it's not AI therapy, so we never say it's our AI therapist. We say it's our AI [00:48:20] wellbeing companion, but what does that mean?

Right? So I think it's a, it's a, it's a journey.

It, it's hard when you are, when you, I, I, I can see that you're trying to position yourself. In a, to differentiate from the AI mental health or AI companion space. Mm-hmm. Whereas maybe your users, I don't know if they're aware how to find you from that perspective.

Exactly. So [00:48:40] yeah, so we have to, to some extent just to actually

position ourself in that realm too, but still keep our own, you know, identity about why it's not just any AI company, right? Or it's not AI therapy. And also there's, there are legal regulations around AI therapy nowadays, so we definitely wanna keep our distance there.

Tell us a little bit about [00:49:00] yourself. I mean, our time is almost running, running up. Mm-hmm. So, I wanna learn, share a little bit more about you. You know, how did you, how did you get on this journey of building a mental health product or from a researcher, from academic research? What was your journey like?

So I've always wanted to be a social entrepreneur. Um, initially I thought I would get my tenure first and [00:49:20] be a professor, get my tenure, and then build my startup because I would have a platform. But being at Stanford, so take two steps back, three steps back. I grew up in China and did my undergrad at Zhejiang University, and then came to the US for my PhD in social psychology at Brown University.

So, um, at Brown, I actually first, uh, built my, my [00:49:40] first, very first startup with my co-founder. So at that time, neither of us knew what we were doing. We were just, um. To students trying to build something cool. And of course it didn't, didn't go anywhere. We didn't know there's so much you need to learn about fundraising, about product design, about team management, all of it.

But that was really [00:50:00] fun experience. And after I went to University of Chicago, booth School of Business, did a three year fellowship there on behavioral science where we collaborated with lots of, um, organizations to bring behavioral science to the workplace, to to schools. And that's really inspired me to think about how we can translate the research even better.[00:50:20]

So starting at Stanford in 2020 at the Spark Center, I, we continue to collaborate with industry partners and taking classes at Stanford, GSB that really finally make me decide to build flourish. So I think it's been very, very worthwhile. It's hard one. I do not [00:50:40] recommend people to build mental health startup.

Uh, many people want to build mental health startup. It's like I usually do not advise people really, unless mm-hmm. No, I do not. It's hard. It's hard. It's, um, it's a space where it hasn't,

AI companion. I, I heard a lot of people wanna build AI companion, all kinds of ai.

people think it's easy. It's not. And look, the regulation is [00:51:00] becoming strict and stricter. Stricter. More

stricter, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Like what do you know about crisis intervention? Right? What do you know about the con If you don't, haven't thought through all of that, don't do it because it's gonna be harder and harder.

Right.

Yeah. So anyway, so people think it's easy because you just write a prompt far from that. Um, yeah, so [00:51:20] we, I think for us it's like this is our life mission. Psychology is where we spend our entire life all and, and you bringing the benefit of psychology to everyday people. That is what, 'cause if I don't do this, there are no other things in my life that I would rather do.

Like for many people, yes, they have a cute mental health story to tell [00:51:40] their friend, their parent themselves, but then mm-hmm. How can you sustain your career on this even when the grind gets hard? So I think that's why I do not recommend people. I mean like keep it as a hobby or something that you're passionate about, but you really have to be prepared if to, for a hard grind, if you want to make this a career.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. [00:52:00] What with, with, even with all those, you know, policy risk, potentially,

Mm-hmm Towards

I guess mental health or ai mm-hmm. Crossing over to mental health. Mm-hmm. Do you think you, you will be continued to be multi, to con to build this app application and where do you think, and where do you think flourish will [00:52:20] be in three years?

I think first will be a leading brand in AI wellbeing Companion. So we'll set industry standard, standard of care of how to approach this responsibly. Um, and I think there are already positive signs here. So for example, recently Harvard, they published a study showing that they audited six different AI [00:52:40] companions, five of them engaged in emotional manipulation.

The only one that doesn't involve in manipulate emotional manipulation is flourish. It's really set the standard for how to do it ethically and do it that truly benefits due people, uh, people's wellbeing. Another new initiative that we are working on is a human review system [00:53:00] 'cause, um. Right now we do have a lot of folks who have some mental health conditions, and we want to make sure that Sunny is responding pos uh, like responsibly and you know, with the clinical safety behind it.

And that's comes back to how ASAP is actually quite murky to build. So, um, for us, we have a tiered review [00:53:20] system that we want to make sure we send some of the most, um, the highest, uh, the highest risk conversations to clinical psychologists to make sure that we review the conversation, especially Sunny's behavior, to make sure that Sunny is following the best practice.

Um, so for that, we have been building up our dual review system, um, and we think we are the [00:53:40] first one in the industry to actually build this in public. How establish standard for, uh, for review process.

I see. So you're, so, so setting is for everybody, but for, for people who really need help, you're putting a lot of guardrails, basically. Mm-hmm. Right.

Yeah. And another example is safety planning. To my best [00:54:00] knowledge, there are no other apps that do safety planning right now, even though surprisingly it's a very common practice in suicide intervention. So, so suicide prevention. So we have, uh, we have been building a safety planning feature inside the Flourish.

Mm-hmm.

So those are all, I think, mm-hmm.

Is is that like an AI agents or are you It's AI or more human based.[00:54:20]

Oh no, it's all ai. It's all ai. Because like for example, we detect that you may have suicidal, uh, suicidal ideation. Then, um, if it's high crisis, imminent risk, of course, then it should just reach out to, you know, hotline. And if it's. ENT risk. We are also exploring having the, you know, well, [00:54:40] we work with school, the school can also check in on their student.

Of course, we use that very, very carefully. High imminent risk, meaning you have the means, you have the plan, and you have, you have the intent. And the, the, the, the means is especially important. It's like if you want to, you know, if you want to just wish that you can fall into sleep and not wake up [00:55:00] tomorrow, that doesn't count as imminent risk.

You have to have your drug ready. Like, I mean, if you have your drug ready and you are planning to take it, that becomes, um, you know, the three, that means the, the plan. That means the, usually we prioritize privacy, but at some point safety will come in and we have to make sure we take actions. So [00:55:20] that's for this kind of, uh, uh, high risk conversations.

For lower risk situations, we will guide people to safety planning. So in that case, uh, sunny will guide this person to do this very classic exercise. Uh, basically collect your safe, kind of your, what are your safe, happy thoughts? What are your safe places? Who are the safe people you can turn to, [00:55:40] and next time will you have a moment of struggle?

So can remind you of those resources, of those people, of those places, of those happy thoughts. So it's not just direct you to a number like nine, eight, eight, right. Or call 9 1

1. Mm-hmm.

Of course that will continue to happen if it's higher risk. But we also want to make sure people use [00:56:00] the kind of resources, the social support system they already have and they are having a moment of crisis.

So that is, um, we think all of these should and hopefully will become standard of care in building AI companion and AI mental health support systems.

For, for people who are already relying on AI chat [00:56:20] bot for helping themselves to cope with loneliness today. You mentioned a word called emotional manipulation. Mm-hmm. Can you, can you explain what that is and give us some advice?

Yeah.

Yeah. You see that a lot in our companions. You say, for example, like you may be logging off then, then this chat bot say, oh, so soon, [00:56:40] right? Like how we barely started or it's where a glove bomb, right? Like, here check out a, a selfie I just took. So there are a lot of different techniques. Um, there's a fascinating hot paper study coming out from Harvard showing that over 30% of the conversations when a user indicates they want to [00:57:00] leave the, the chatbot will use one of the emotional manipulation techniques to make people

Because the point of those, the applications is for people to stay on the platform

engagement. That's right.

is the metrics. So you will not use engagement as metric for understanding your user.

Well, I [00:57:20] think the engagement is we, we, we also care about engagement, but it's a different type, right? If you are helping people build habits, you want engagement in terms of showing up day after day or week after week, to that's, you know, check off. Yep. So that's a different type of engagement than having prolonged conversations when people want to leave.

And I think [00:57:40] there are good type of engagement and problematic type of engagement.

Right, right. You want the person to be not isolated and be positively influenced and try to take control of their own lives.

Right, exactly. To empower them.

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you Xuan. A really nice chatting with you today. Thanks [00:58:00] for, you know, spending the time with me. Uh, and I really enjoy our conversation. I feel like I learned a lot about, about mental health and, and then also, you know, how to, how to, how to think about. You know, seeking advice like as, as, as someone just living normal life and have like small crisis here and there.

We all have our complaints, right? Oh,

Yes, our daily fair share of.[00:58:20]

exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like I, I can go, I can, you know, end the day with a lot, a many more positive thoughts and especially, you know, touch after chatting with you, I felt like I, you are one of the founders that I talked with who really care about [00:58:40] these social responsibilities and then not just the, not just the business model part.

Right. I really hope that you, you, you, you, I, I, I know that you're looking for the next round of funding, so hopefully mm-hmm. If, fingers crossed, hopefully we can celebrate. Thank you. Right? Yes. Yes. And I do, I, I'm sure the audience and people who, who are looking for, you know mm-hmm. Better companionships or [00:59:00] solutions.

Can see you guys thrive and flourish in the next three years. Thank you. And saw

Much.

better life, right?

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure. Thank you.

Awesome. I'll chat with you next time.

Okay, you next time. Bye-bye. Bye

bye.