Early Days #17: Feed Filter AI by Ted Thayer

Summary:

In this episode of Early Days, Car sits down with Ted from Feed Filter AI to explore using AI as a tool to enhance user experience on social media by filtering out unwanted content.

They discuss the role of Feed Filter AI in content curation, the challenges of social media today, and the importance of understanding user needs in early-stage products.

Ted shares hard lessons from earlier startups, the importance of shipping with live user feedback, and why he’s building Feed Filter AI as a company for the Bitcoin era, where privacy, ownership, and open networks matter.

We explore:

• How to Make Social Media Great Again!
• Where does the moat live? User-owned rules, privacy, compounding models
• What to measure? Junk removed, time saved, retention
• User-controlled filters that run across X and Instagram
• Cutting social noise so users get their attention back

Chapters:

00:00 Problem framing: noise steals attention, AI gives it back

03:11 Context over keywords: how the model reads text, images, memes

06:33 UX realities: overwhelm, friction, drop-off—what actually fixes it

09:55 Market entry: where Feed Filter wins first, initial wedge

12:21 Feedback loop: ship weekly, instrument everything, learn fast

16:15 Filtering engine: user rules, aggregation, precision at scale

20:55 Roadmap and future app rollout

25:05 Founder scars: what previous startups taught Ted that transfers

40:30 Surviving the trough: cash, focus, and saying no

48:13 Past pivots (incl. health tech): extracting playbooks, not baggage

58:07 Post-mortems that matter: what to keep, what to kill

01:02:53 Building for the Bitcoin era: privacy, ownership, open networks

Learn more about Feed Filter AI

• Download Feed Filter AI for Chrome
• Follow Feed Filter AI on X
• Follow Ted Thayer on X

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