Horizon Newsletter • October 8, 2024
Horizon Live 2024 - SuperPower Announcement

At the end of day one of Horizon Live 2024, Sean Devine unveiled XBE's next big product, SuperPower.

This was a surprise reveal, and if you'd like to relive it, this is the presentation for you.

SuperPower Announcement Thumbnail

Watch the presentation on YouTube.

A transcript of the presentation is provided below.


Grant and the Magician

You know, everyone in the room knows Grant pretty well now, but if you didn't know him, all you'd have to know is that he begged for a magician. And I finally, after six years, relented. And then he said, "Can I have a second?" It's a 100% true story. That actually happened. So anyways, we did get one. It was, I mean, we got to get to this, but Nick came to me and said, "Listen, Grant really wants this. You got to make a decision." And it pained me so much to agree that it was the right thing. But anyways, it'll be a lot of fun. So let's get to it.


End of Day One

This is the end of day one. It's amazing. And everyone still here. The energy has been great. And yeah, without further ado. Oh no, there we are.


Introduction

Okay. You probably think that I'm going to talk about AI stuff to start with, but I'm not. I'm going to talk about what we've all spent a bunch of time doing today and yesterday and the day before that, and probably the thousand days that came before that—staring at our phones, scrolling something. Maybe it's Instagram. Maybe it's Twitter. Maybe it's Facebook. Maybe it's all of them.


The Power of Scrolling

But we have figured out collectively, in spite of ourselves, that nothing beats the convenience and speed of scrolling—some say doom scrolling—a feed of information, right? The world has solved the problem of delivering us what we want, which is a fire hose of information that's fun that we can scroll.

Now, that has led to a funny side effect, which is we've just never been more efficient at wasting our own time, right? We can waste so much time so efficiently because it works, right? It's the way to consume information.


XBE's Opportunity

And we started to wonder something, which is like, why aren't—why is it XBE? Why aren't any of the apps that we use at work leveraging that insight, which is all of us like one kind of app the most, and it's an app with a feed that we can scroll endlessly that delivers us bite-sized chunks of information that keeps us on the wheel, right? We all, we've decided that's what we like. You know, we don't—we say we want dashboards, but what we want is Instagram.

And we started to ask the question, like, what are we missing collectively that isn't leading to us using some of these insights for enterprise software like XBE? And I mean, we all know XBE, right? So on the bright side, it's gigantic. You know, I mean, I remember back when we first started to work with Superior Bowen, which is like six or seven years ago—seven years ago, I think. You know, the platform felt a little wide and a little deep. And then it's expanded at a constant, constant rate, then increasing since then. And at this point, it's gigantic, right? Every one of those 52 plays in the playbook is backed up by another dozen features that go super deep.

And so that's the good of XBE, right? Really wide and really deep.


The Challenge of Complexity

But let's talk about the bad, which is that the more complexity there is, the harder it is to use. And let me tell you, this is a frustrating reality, and that we work and work and work to add the capabilities that everyone, you know, needs and demands and wants. And then the next day, we hear how those capabilities made things harder. And we're stuck in the middle going, "Well, I know that people need to be able to do more. And I know that there is an unavoidable problem with the platform doing more, which is that it becomes harder to use."

And just think about it as a simple math problem, right? Every single little facet, every nook and cranny, every new page, every new button, every new idea is load that's going on our head. We got to figure it out. And then you got the XBE person, that's the expert in this area, the expert in that area. And on the bright side, we can, you know, so much is possible. And in some ways, it kind of torments you, right? Because you're like, "Well, I know everything's possible, and I don't know how to do it."


Rethinking Complexity

And I thought about, you know, what, well, let me back up. We've thought about it for literally constantly for seven years. And the question is, like, well, you know, maybe we'll unify the design language. Maybe we'll make that page easier. Maybe we'll add Kayla so that it's easier to get answers about how it works. Maybe we'll refine the language. Maybe we'll add better training and, you know, and all the things you would do too. And on and on and on and on and on.

And what it felt like was sort of bailing a boat out that had a lot of water coming in that we were putting in because we were adding the features that, of course, people need. And back in July, we said, "You know what? Maybe we're looking at the problem wrong. Maybe it's not just that we want to reduce the pain of more complexity. More capability, you know, the form of complexity. Maybe what we need to do is flip it on its head."


Introducing SuperPower

Maybe we need to make it so that the more capable the platform is, the easier it is to use—not the harder.

We said, "I don't know how we're gonna do it," but that's our goal: to make ease of use a function of complexity. That the more capability we add, the easier it becomes. Because you know what? People have said the same thing again and again, which is that they feel like they need to be a superhero to use XBE to its fullest capability. They know what's possible. They take trips to other companies. They see the videos. They look at it themselves. They read the game plan. And they say, "I don't want to have to be a superhero. I just want to have superpowers. I don't know how to do all the things. I just want to be able to do them."

And we think we've solved it. We think we've got the idea that flips it on its head so that instead of having all of the capability lead to complexity that makes things less usable, that instead we give you superpowers. And the superpowers flip the tradeoff. They make it so that the app gets easier every day. The experience of it doesn't change. It just gets smarter.


Launching SuperPower

And so we've got a new app. And it's called SuperPower. And it's going to be released in early 2025—Q1 2025, hopefully as close to the beginning as possible. And I want to tell you about it.


SuperPower Overview

  • Not a Separate App:
    SuperPower is built on the same underlying infrastructure that powers the same XBE that you're using today. So that enormous engine that's powering everything—we said, "How do we leverage that while creating an experience that doesn't have any of its baggage?"
  • Not Just a Feature:
    To be clear, SuperPower is not a feature like game plans. I was excited to announce game plans. I was excited to send them out earlier this year. I was excited to work with customers on them. I'm excited to dress up like Vince Lombardi and talk about them today. But game plans are just another feature in XBE that's helping our customers achieve things that are great.
  • Vision for the Future:
    SuperPower is our vision for the next eight years of the core interaction model for XBE. And I'm excited to be able to demo it today. So let's do it.

Exclusive Preview

Now, I just want to make one quick comment. I think four people have seen SuperPower in the world. Like one of them is my dad. So we have worked in a pretty tight team to build this. Most of XBE hasn't even seen all of SuperPower yet. So this is one of the reasons for the excitement.


First Glimpse at SuperPower

Here's your first glimpse at SuperPower. And it'll look suspiciously like other social media apps that you've used. And we're going to go through all the details.


Top Features

  • Creators:
    Up at the top, we've got ideas that you're used to working with—literally projects, game plans, trophies, people, right? So those are the creators.
    What do we mean by that?
    We said, "Hey, what if we make the individual resources in XBE creators that can post to a timeline?" For example:
  • Job Production Plan:
    Knows a huge amount about what's going on. We teach it to create posts like it's an Instagram influencer, sharing interesting details.
  • Game Plans:
    Objectives post their status every day.
  • Feed:
    A single scrollable feed that includes posts from all projects, job production plans, trucking companies, and objectives, formatted for easy reading.

Example Posts

  1. Late Start Post Type:
    "On Project X, there is a late start that was 44 minutes late. It was planned for 10:30. It didn't ship till 11:13. The delay impacted eight trucks, eight people, and six pieces of equipment."
  2. Project Plan Post Type:
    "Project plan for automating raw material inventory estimation is 25% complete. Status: Yellow. Summary of what's been done and what to expect."

Win Status Scoreboard

To the right, you'll see a win status scoreboard. It's automatically posted every day, analyzing every win across all game plans. It aggregates high-level metrics and summarizes what's changed and what's notable.


Creator Icons

At the top, each icon represents different resources, sorted like Instagram by recent posts. Here's a zoomed-in look:

  • Custom Avatars:
    Each creator (e.g., projects) has custom-designed avatars with project-specific language and iconography.
  • Trophies:
    Each trophy has a unique design and name (e.g., Driver Visibility Trophy) with relevant icons.

Consistent Interface

Every content type has short text and long text:

  • Short Text:
    Visible in the feed for a quick glimpse.
  • Long Text:
    Accessible by clicking into the details.

Regardless of post type—whether there are 2,000 types or more—the interface remains identical. You just scroll through the feed to find what matters to you.


Personalized Feeds

Each person's feed is personalized based on their role and relationships within the organization. Here's how it works:

  • Content Creators:
    Evaluate who may care about each post based on roles and relationships.
  • Feed Personalization:
    Each individual has a unique feed, not just an organization-wide feed.
  • Visual Distinction:
    Different post types have unique visuals to make key information stand out at a glance.

Engaging with Content

Every post is something you can engage with. For example:

  • Trophy Post Interaction:
    "Automate Raw Material Inventory"
  • Details:
    "Remaining wins, including compliance achievement and system retirement, haven't yet started but are sequenced to follow once earlier tasks are wrapped up. The end date's approaching.
  • User Interaction:
  • Michael Alvarez:
    "This is great. Who are the customer success leaders of the remaining wins?"
  • Kayla's Response:
    [Automated response with relevant information]

Introducing Kayla

Meet Kayla, our virtual assistant integrated into SuperPower:

  • Iconography:
    Stylish woman with a banana and a halo indicates Kayla's responses.
  • Functionality:
  • Answering Questions:
    Kayla can fetch information, perform analysis, and think critically to provide comprehensive answers.
  • Actionable Tasks:
    Kayla can perform actions like approving time cards or dispatching lineups based on your instructions.
  • Continuous Improvement:
    As more post types and skills are added, Kayla becomes smarter and more capable, making the platform easier to use over time.

How Kayla Works

  • Automatic Listening:
    XBE listens for relevant information and engages without needing explicit invocation.
  • Contextual Understanding:
    Kayla understands the context of your queries by analyzing related posts and information within the feed.
  • Advanced AI Integration:
    Recently upgraded to the new O1 mini model, Kayla can now perform more complex thinking and analysis beyond the GPT-4o class engine.

Interactive Demonstration

Let's see Kayla in action:

  1. Question Example:
    "Provide me a list of the minutes early or late on this job for the last few days."
  • Kayla's Response:
    "14th: 2 minutes early, 13th: 4 minutes late, 12th: 2 minutes late, 11th: 13 minutes late."
  1. Feature Suggestion Example:
  • User:
    "I wish there was a post type that showed me the trucking surplus for the milling jobs yesterday."
  • Kayla:
    "It sounds like you're suggesting a feature to generate performance reports for all drivers on a job. Would you like me to create a new feature suggestion for you?"
  • User:
    "Yes."
  • Kayla:
    [Creates the feature suggestion instantly]

Community Engagement

SuperPower is designed to incorporate your ideas seamlessly:

  • Feature Suggestion Proffer:
    Type your ideas directly into the feed, and Kayla will handle the rest.
  • Upvoting and Merging Ideas:
    If multiple users suggest similar features, Kayla intelligently merges or upvotes based on user input.

Getting Started with SuperPower

Here's how you can engage with SuperPower:

  1. Access the Preview:
  • Availability:
    The preview is available today.
  1. Provide Feedback:
  • Share your ideas for new post types and features.
  1. Continuous Improvement:
  • Expect daily additions of new post types and skills, enhancing the platform's capabilities without altering the familiar interface.

Acknowledgments

Before wrapping up, I want to thank a few key people:

  • Entire XBE Team:
    For keeping things together and pushing towards the finish line.
  • Milind:
    For primary collaboration on SuperPower.
  • Juliana:
    Took over day-to-day management of the core app since July 11th.
  • Team Members:
    Pankaj, Colenso, Keval, and Ravi for their contributions.

Milind deserves a bunch of applause.


Final Thoughts

  • No Major Interface Changes:
    SuperPower is built on top of the existing XBE backend, ensuring that the front end remains familiar and unchanged.
  • Invitation to Collaborate:
    We invite you to download SuperPower, explore its features, and share your ideas. Your feedback is invaluable as we continue to build and refine this platform together.
  • Interactive Session Tomorrow:
    Tomorrow, we'll have an interactive session to discuss post types and actions developed by the community. It’s going to be an amazing experience together.

Conclusion

So, let's go and celebrate you, celebrate SuperPower, and celebrate Horizon Live. Thank you!


Enjoy the rest of Horizon Live 2024 and stay tuned for more exciting updates from XBE.