# Thinner Agents on a Smarter Substrate: The Ontology-based Semantic Layer — Emil Eifrem — session 2026-07-02T17:20:00.000Z → 2026-07-02T17:30:00.000Z

_39 transcript lines · 0 slides · source: full recording_

## Transcript

You are obviously very sympathetically aligned to startups. But there's some anxiety in the room because tomorrow's entropic could wake up and publish some markdown files that destroy my industry. So why should we not all just give up and join Entropic? Like, why bother starting any other company? I mean I actually joined one of the main reasons I joined Anthropic was because I saw how much this was like you know, the models weren't that good at code yet, but they were getting there. Like, how much it would unlock, like, whole, like, next generation of startups. Not because it was gonna solve their ideation or their taste, but because, like, it would make experimentation way simpler and and would get you to move faster. And I still, like, really believe that. And, I mean, it's the reality of, you know, and we saw this at, like, Instagram. Like, we'd get questions in investors like, well, what happens when Google launches a photo? Products. It's like Google's gonna launch a very Googly photos product and it's gonna have to be bound by the integrations that they already have and it's gonna be, like, it's gonna play to their strengths. I think that is going to be true. They're not, like, giving advice on how to compete with anthropic, I guess, in a way. But, like, it's actually not because we're also a platform which is, like, there's so much, I think, room to be, like, laser obsessed with your particular vertical or your industry or a group of people that you know really well in a way that, like, none of the labs are ever going to get to that level of, of understanding and, like, therefore, get that kind of adoption. And User love and and build that up. Now it's definitely harder in the age where, like, the models can just do a lot, and so there's you know, some of these things can be, like, skillified and, like, maybe don't need their own dedicated product. But I think it's, like, the hard stuff is still hard. It's, like, understanding the needs of people, like, figuring out how you're gonna reach them, listening to them and iterating on them really quickly. Like, it is still the case that, like, a group of four or five people obsessed with the problem is going to move faster than those same people at any other kind of organization that are, like, you know, subject just to the complexity. Just mentioned the, like, the fact that we have, you know, a lot of different products that kind of interoperate. Like, that's a interesting constraint that we have to work through. It's an advantage in other ways. Right? So, yeah, I'm still, like, very long and bullish on start ups, and, it just it papers over the fact that, like, writing code was never the, like, the limiting part. I mean, maybe it was on the timeline perspective, but it was never, like, the thing that was gonna, like, make or break your startup. It's really that space and user understanding. Yeah. Domain knowledge. Yeah. Today is also our day. For vertical AI. One of our, returning speakers and top speakers, Chris Lovejoy, was always talking about vertical AI. He was in from interior in the healthcare space. And then recently, I I invited him back and turned out he you guys just hired him for your healthcare efforts. We also our next big one is also finance. You know, we have a AI and finance track. You guys just had a huge finance event in New York City, and where our next, AI is is sort of finance focused. What do you see in there? Any, you know, any potential Clyde, obviously, a lot of Excel Excel spreadsheets. Yeah. No. I think that there's there's a lot in there too, and that's, like, an area where, you could see the model get clearly better at it, like, sort of generation to generation. And there's, you know, some good sort of vertical specific, finance startups that have, like, done their own evals, which has also been interesting to to track. And it's not like we're, like, sort of playing to the eval, but it is a useful sort of barometer on, like, is this actually getting better, at these finance use cases. I think the interesting blend that's going to happen Is this mix of, again, the model having the flexibility to, like, dive in and create just in time analysis or dashboards or workflows with, like, some sense of, like, what is the not immutable, but at least, like, verified sort of set of data. And so, like, set having all of that be totally free form, I think, is a recipe for confusion and is, like, not what most companies in the financial services space want. So finding that right, sort of cut line where you have verifiability and audit logging and and sort of Data provenance here, but not in a way that constrains the kinds of applications that you can build on top. I think there's a lot of the art that we're seeing in that space as well. And I think, you know, if you solve it well, you you can get the best of both worlds. The hard part is a lot of the systems that were built to do the verifiability, datability, like, are kind of, almost by design, not super flexible in terms of agentic workloads on top. So I think there's opportunity at both sides of the stack. Yeah. I think I I also agree we'll be exploring that in in New York. The last thing I wanna end on is on mental health, which we don't talk about enough in technical conference conferences. You've seen a lot of hypergrowth. People are just always refreshing their timelines, and it's exhausting. How do you advise people who are working nine nine six to avoid burnout? Yeah. I mean, I think this is a hard one. I mean and it is I'm sure you all are experiencing this because you're all working in this industry. Like, it is, you know, multiples more intense and things move more quicker. Like, are the two things that we were thinking about was, like, what is Apple gonna announce at WWC, and is it gonna, like, totally mess us up or boost us? Right? So that that's, like, once a year. Or, you know, we had competitor launches every three or four months. Right? Yeah. I got Instagram. And, it is definitely not that. It is a topic we we do when we do our weekly all hands. It's usually on Wednesdays, and we have a slide that's like, the week in AI, parentheses, and it's only Wednesday. And, like, and, inevitably, like, some competitor has shipped a new model, and, like, there's been a, like, new product, and maybe there's some interesting thing happening. On the regulation side. Like, things are moving really, really quickly. I think the way I try to stay at least relatively sane, one is, like, actually carving time off. And I think the topic cofounders do a good job of, like, saying, like, look. Like, burn out if you burn out, like, you're kinda done. And I've seen it happen, unfortunately, to people who I'm really close to, and then it takes a long time to recover from that. So actually encouraging people. Like, there's no job that is so important that you can't be offline for a couple of days. So I think that's, like, a big key, like, piece in there. So, like, that's Strongly believe. And if it is, you're probably doing something wrong, and you talk to somebody who could be a mentor to figure out how you can, unblock that. And then I think the other one as well is, like, I love sports and, like, this is the notion of, like, you're never as good as, like, your best game and you're never as bad as your worst game. I think that's also really true. Like, I know, like, in AI, there's, like, the, you know, it's so over, we're so back thing. Like, that like, if you internalize that that cycle is always going to be at play in some way, you realize Like, it's never that bad. Like, Ben Horowitz's, book is The Hard Thing About Hard Things, has this chapter on, like, we're effed it's over and, like, that feeling as a start up that probably many of you have had at start ups where you're like, oh, I can't believe this thing happened. Like, we're never gonna, like, recover from this. I definitely had an Instagram a couple of times. And then you get through it, and, like, it's that, like, def like, defines the company when you can actually go through that. I try to remind myself and the team here even with an entropic, which is like like, this is a it's a fast moving, but it's also a long game. And it's like we're never it's never Just about today's model launch and reaction or this product launch or something else. Like, you're playing in your building. You just have to trust that you're building, like, the team and culture that is going to get through those things and have that sense of perspective. Even if perspective is saying, like, look, three months ago, we were in a similar position. Maybe it's not a year. It's just a matter of months, but it's still, like, zooming out and not thinking things not letting your internal sort of, like, sense of self and success be so driven by the day to day. Yeah. It has anyone, any coach or mentor? Or said something to you that you repeat to yourself, that gets you through the tough times? I think the biggest one was, this, like, sense of, like, if you're feeling something, it's really often the case that other people on the team are feeling it too. So this is, like, advice I got from my my coach around just being, like like, just verbalizing emotions. Like, even saying, like, hey. I'm feeling really stressed out about this. Or, yeah. I'm really sad that we are shutting down this labs initiative. I had literally had this meeting a couple months ago where I was working really hard on something, and I kicked off the meeting, like, I'll kick it off. Like, I'm really sad. Like, I'm frustrated. Like, I wish this thing had worked out. And I think that holds the space for other people to be like, yeah. I'm pissed off too. Or, like, I'm sad too. And, like, I think giving that advice around, like, not, yeah. I think if you can get yourself to be open and vulnerable, it often, like, lets other people verbalize that. And then you could from there, you could be like, great. What are we gonna do about it? Like, you know, it's much easier to start from that place. Yeah. We actually kicked off AIE with, a session from Carol Robbins who runs touchy feely at Stanford. And I I can't think of a better way to end then. Encouraging people to talk about their feelings, manage their mental health, and keep shipping. Yeah. Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks for having me. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage our MC, developer relations engineer at Replit, Ralph Chabry. Alright. Let's hear it one more time for our Hello speakers. Alright. Okay. So we learned so much this morning. Right? Like, we spoke about a new protocol, and and we spoke about, like, that AI program should be more like functions and we learned that the real problem with building with agents is not the model but it's about everything around it. But before we go to breakouts Guys, I would like to announce our next speaker. So a quick word from our sponsor Neo4j. Anybody uses graphs here? Alright, fair amount, fair amount. Okay, cool. So, our next speaker is going to talk to you about ontology based semantic layers. When you hear ontology and semantic in the same sentence you know that you're up to up for something hot. Alright, so without further ado, please join me in welcoming to the stage CEO of Neo4j Emil Ephram.

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