Ep #15: Matt Webb (Inanimate): Building an Inventor's Practice, Poem/1's Retro Charm, and Agentic Fulfilment

Tom and Jonny sit down with inventor Matt Webb, the man behind Berg, Little Printer and the poetry clock Poem/1. They dig into how he built a practice around human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, unpack the retro charm of his ageing AI clock, and go behind the scenes of the Claude-powered agents running Poem/1's Kickstarter fulfilment.

Key takeaways

1. Shape your role around your practice. Matt focuses on human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, rather than chasing a job title.
2. AI is a rubber duck, not a co-writer. Its value is helping you think aloud without replacing your voice.
3. Universal Basic Agency. AI can help non-experts cross the single technical hurdle blocking an idea.
4. Agents can turn exceptions into policy. Poem/1's fulfilment agent proposes reusable rules for a shared SOP, so problems are solved once.
5. Reports can reveal more than dashboards. Daily narratives surface patterns you did not know to track.
6. Make deliberate time to learn new tools. Matt blocks at least a day a week because the gains compound.
7. Building on a model means borrowed time. Poem/1 relies on a retiring model whose strange tone newer models cannot reproduce.
8. Poem/1 is an invisible social network. All 700 clocks show the same poem at the same moment worldwide.

Chapters

• 0:04 — Intro and Matt's career throughline
• 5:56 — Leaving leadership to build
• 7:28 — AI and unblocking imagination
• 13:02 — Keeping AI out of your voice
• 17:35 — ChatGPT and tldraw as a rubber duck
• 24:12 — The imagination bottleneck
• 29:04 — Universal Basic Agency
• 34:38 — The story behind Poem/1
• 44:44 — A retro AI product and invisible network
• 52:08 — Agentic Kickstarter fulfilment
• 1:02:54 — Reports versus dashboards
• 1:06:40 — Quickfire questions

Mentioned in the episode

Matt

• Matt Webb's blog, Interconnected — https://interconnected.org
• Unoffice Hours (his 30-minute call booking system) — https://interconnected.org/home/2020/09/24/unoffice_hours
• Acts Not Facts, his consulting practice — https://actsnotfacts.com

Companies and past roles

• Berg — the design studio Matt co-founded with Jack Schulze and Matt Jones
• Google Research
• R/GA Ventures
• Inanimate — Matt's current startup — inanimate.tech, newsletter at https://news.inanimate.tech
• Betaworks — https://betaworks.com

People

• Jack Schulze — Berg co-founder
• Matt Jones — Berg co-founder
• Daniel Fogg — Matt's co-founder at Inanimate
• Alex Hulme — founder and creative director of Approach, the industrial design agency that helped bring Poem/1 to market — https://approach.studio, Poem/1 case study at https://approach.studio/work/poem1
• Tom Armitage — helped with Poem/1's firmware — https://tomarmitage.com

Tools and products discussed

• ChatGPT — https://chatgpt.com
• Claude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-code
• tldraw — https://tldraw.com
• BackerKit — https://backerkit.com
• Floship — https://floship.com
• M5Stick, made by M5Stack — https://m5stack.com
• Friend, the AI pendant — https://friend.com

Matt's own projects, mentioned

• Little Printer, made at Berg — https://berglondon.com/projects/bergcloud
• Poem/1, Matt's poetry clock — https://poem.town
• Galactic Compass, the app that points to the centre of the galaxy — https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/galactic-compass
• A 270kg book vending machine that tweeted when it sold a book

About the pod

• Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works
• Find us at https://nearfuture.works