Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Full transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/ian-rogers
Ian Rogers is Chief Human Agency Officer of Ledger, the Paris-based security company whose hardware wallets secure much of the world's crypto. He now focuses on how Ledger can enable us to work with AI agents while maintaining our secrets and value.
His career has spanned music, culture, brand, and "the technolog(ies) people are going to hate next." He built and ran the Beastie Boys web presence in the 90s before working on music on the internet for over a decade: file sharing at Nullsoft (Winamp and Gnutella), early streaming at Yahoo!, direct-to-fan commerce at Topspin, Beats Music, and finally Apple, as an abbreviated list. He then joined LVMH as its first Chief Digital Officer, working with Bernard Arnault and its many Maisons to bring them into the internet era. More recently, he joined Ledger to improve its product experience, including collaborating with Tony Fadell to create Ledger's most premier form factor, Ledger Stax.
Ian's roots are skateboarding and music, which formed alongside a punk rock ideology while growing up in Indiana in the 1980s. I am glad to have captured a long conversation that covers the many flavors of Ian, and the threads that have persisted through his many lives. That includes: individuality, being a participant rather than a spectator, what makes a scene, building brands, trying to help Kanye, and why new culture is always being made—it's just that you have to find the 1% that's awesome. Also: ushering forward and translating frontier technologies, being pushed by Jimmy Iovine, why security matters in the AI era, why AIs aren't people, what he wants to automate, learning to fail, advice on relationships across work, parenting, and love, and a whole lot of love for music—from his 2026 pick Twisted Teens to his desert island albums to tea with Paul McCartney.
I hope you're inspired to participate in the world and make great things. Thanks to our friends at Ledger for hosting me.
--
Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic.
--
Timestamps:
(0:00) Opening Highlights
(1:37) Intro to Ian & Thanks to Notion
(5:22) Start: Tattoos, Individuality, and Punk Rock: Spectator vs Participant
(16:44) What Makes a Scene?
(25:24) New Culture, 99% of Everything is Garbage, Finding the 1%
(40:09) Niche, Quality, and The Blockbuster vs. The Snowball
(53:35) Brand, Selling Culture Before Product, and The Age of the Individual
(1:08:12) Aggression, Patience, and Being Pushed
(1:16:52) Translating New Technologies, Empowerment, and Agency
(1:25:19) Interfaces, Ledger, Security, and Ideology
(1:39:56) Ian's New Role: Chief Human Agency Officer
(2:06:03) Seeing What is Real, Comfort Being Wrong, Chasing What's Fun and Cool
(2:13:45) Lessons from Skateboarding and Favorite Albums
(2:22:56) Working with Your Friends, Parenting, Love, and Remembering to Stay a Participant
(2:35:47) Thanks Again to Notion
Links:
- Ian Rogers on X: https://x.com/iancr
- Ian Rogers on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/iancrogers
- Ledger: ledger.com
Playlist with albums/songs mentioned here:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/playlist/5lwlT3x8bcFJVTNARBAjW2?si=e489bc8b71074197
Apple: music.apple.com/us/playlist/dialectic/pl.u-vxy6j1xIzBevWp7
Dialectic with Jackson Dahl is available on all podcast platforms.
Website: https://dialectic.fm
Twitter / X: https://x.com/dialecticpod
Instagram: instagram.com/dialecticpod
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2IEN4eE9HvNKJHnLv5EMG9?si=83cbf79037954926
Apple Podcasts: apple.co/4hpS4U7
Substack (subscribe for all episodes): jdahl.substack.com/s/dialectic
Join the Telegram channel for Dialectic: https://t.me/dialecticpod
Full transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/ian-rogers
Ian Rogers is Chief Human Agency Officer of Ledger, the Paris-based security company whose hardware wallets secure much of the world's crypto. He now focuses on how Ledger can enable us to work with AI agents while maintaining our secrets and value.
His career has spanned music, culture, brand, and "the technolog(ies) people are going to hate next." He built and ran the Beastie Boys web presence in the 90s before working on music on the internet for over a decade: file sharing at Nullsoft (Winamp and Gnutella), early streaming at Yahoo!, direct-to-fan commerce at Topspin, Beats Music, and finally Apple, as an abbreviated list. He then joined LVMH as its first Chief Digital Officer, working with Bernard Arnault and its many Maisons to bring them into the internet era. More recently, he joined Ledger to improve its product experience, including collaborating with Tony Fadell to create Ledger's most premier form factor, Ledger Stax.
Ian's roots are skateboarding and music, which formed alongside a punk rock ideology while growing up in Indiana in the 1980s. I am glad to have captured a long conversation that covers the many flavors of Ian, and the threads that have persisted through his many lives. That includes: individuality, being a participant rather than a spectator, what makes a scene, building brands, trying to help Kanye, and why new culture is always being made—it's just that you have to find the 1% that's awesome. Also: ushering forward and translating frontier technologies, being pushed by Jimmy Iovine, why security matters in the AI era, why AIs aren't people, what he wants to automate, learning to fail, advice on relationships across work, parenting, and love, and a whole lot of love for music—from his 2026 pick Twisted Teens to his desert island albums to tea with Paul McCartney.
I hope you're inspired to participate in the world and make great things. Thanks to our friends at Ledger for hosting me.
--
Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic.
--
Timestamps:
(0:00) Opening Highlights
(1:37) Intro to Ian & Thanks to Notion
(5:22) Start: Tattoos, Individuality, and Punk Rock: Spectator vs Participant
(16:44) What Makes a Scene?
(25:24) New Culture, 99% of Everything is Garbage, Finding the 1%
(40:09) Niche, Quality, and The Blockbuster vs. The Snowball
(53:35) Brand, Selling Culture Before Product, and The Age of the Individual
(1:08:12) Aggression, Patience, and Being Pushed
(1:16:52) Translating New Technologies, Empowerment, and Agency
(1:25:19) Interfaces, Ledger, Security, and Ideology
(1:39:56) Ian's New Role: Chief Human Agency Officer
(2:06:03) Seeing What is Real, Comfort Being Wrong, Chasing What's Fun and Cool
(2:13:45) Lessons from Skateboarding and Favorite Albums
(2:22:56) Working with Your Friends, Parenting, Love, and Remembering to Stay a Participant
(2:35:47) Thanks Again to Notion
Links:
- Ian Rogers on X: https://x.com/iancr
- Ian Rogers on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/iancrogers
- Ledger: ledger.com
Playlist with albums/songs mentioned here:
Spotify: open.spotify.com/playlist/5lwlT3x8bcFJVTNARBAjW2?si=e489bc8b71074197
Apple: music.apple.com/us/playlist/dialectic/pl.u-vxy6j1xIzBevWp7
Dialectic with Jackson Dahl is available on all podcast platforms.
Website: https://dialectic.fm
Twitter / X: https://x.com/dialecticpod
Instagram: instagram.com/dialecticpod
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2IEN4eE9HvNKJHnLv5EMG9?si=83cbf79037954926
Apple Podcasts: apple.co/4hpS4U7
Substack (subscribe for all episodes): jdahl.substack.com/s/dialectic
Join the Telegram channel for Dialectic: https://t.me/dialecticpod
![Childhood Friends Built the App Artists Trust With Unfinished Music | [untitled]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XHOMSF7PR1E/mqdefault.jpg "Childhood Friends Built the App Artists Trust With Unfinished Music | [untitled]
Full transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/untitled
Dan Lilienthal and José Chayet are childhood friends and cofounders of [untitled], a platform for musicians that they describe as a sacred place for work-in-progress music. It is where a song lives between recording and streaming. [untitled] is closer to the Photos app than to a social network: a private place to store, listen to, and slowly share demos, with no feed.
Dan and José are not trained musicians, engineers, or designers, but they have built a product artists love by method acting their way into deep empathy. The platform has grown to 50K paying users and now allows artists to share unreleased music directly with fans. Lorde recently released XRAYS on [untitled]: 49 demos and works in progress from her album Virgin, creating a kind of museum behind the record.
We discuss music as a form of communication and a connection to the divine; why they have resisted adding a feed; product inspirations like the iPod and Snapchat; how empathy and QA underpin their product philosophy; designing for 16-year-olds and superstars; AI as an instrument; which parts of the creative process are worth sharing; what it means for software to be sacred; and building a company with your best friend.
I hope youre inspired to consider what is sacred, share and live with the things you make, seek out music that inspires you, and stay untitled a little longer than is comfortable.
-
Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. You can learn more at https://notion.com/dialectic.
-
Timestamps:
(0:00) Opening Highlights
(1:24) Intro to Dan & José & Thanks to Notion
(4:42) Start: Brackets, How Creativity Makes the World Bigger, and Musics Connection to the Divine
(20:40) Duchamp, Music as a Set of Choices, and The Museum Behind the Work
(27:52) [untitled]: A Medium for Music In-Progress
(45:03) From a Better Dropbox to a Creativity Company
(52:13) Empathy as a Product Philosophy and The Collaborations Origins
(1:01:04) Scaling the Sacred Place and Product Intuition
(1:10:33) Lordes XRAYS Drop and Designing for a Wide Range of Artists
(1:17:26) 10K Unheard Songs and Whether Process Should be Seen
(1:24:10) Brand, Trust, Alignment with Artists and the [studio]
(1:30:54) The Word Sacred and Resisting the Feed
(1:40:52) AI as an Instrument: Building Tools Artists Actually Want
(1:49:27) Building a Company with Your Best Friend
(1:56:31) Closing Questions: Dream Users, Rapid Fire Brackets, and Titles
(2:08:52) Thanks Again to Notion
Links:
- This episode on [untitled]: https://untitled.stream/library/project/cwjiMabvKJ01gzOplfU3W
- [untitled]: https://untitled.stream/
- [untitled] on X: https://x.com/uuuntitleddd
- [untitled] on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/untitledinbrackets/
- Dan Lilienthal on X: https://x.com/danchotweets
- José Chayet on X: https://x.com/josechayet
- [studio]: https://studioinbrackets.com/
Key links from the episode:
- Lordes XRAYS on [untitled]: https://untitled.stream/library/project/s9vE9MvCjdHzXc1QKkxEw
- The Beatles: Get Back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back
- Porches on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2JzhQYGos3RqV7MT5fWeek
- Rian Brazil on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1O4STden5bjJI5SLsY8GGH
- Zayok on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6QD9LkrzQQTXYS2TwQaVKl
- Inside Pollen (Billboard): https://www.billboard.com/pro/inside-pollen-mysterious-spotify-playlist-no-rules-apply/
- Big Ass Kids interview with Dan & José: https://www.bigasskids.com/ralphs/interviews/untitled-co-founders-dan-lilienthal-jos-chayet-on-the-rise-of-the-diy-artist-and-how-their-platform-will-kickstart-a-music-renaissance
Dialectic with Jackson Dahl is available on all podcast platforms.
Website: https://dialectic.fm
Twitter / X: https://x.com/dialecticpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialecticpod/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2IEN4eE9HvNKJHnLv5EMG9?si=83cbf79037954926
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4hpS4U7
Substack (subscribe for all episodes): https://jdahl.substack.com/s/dialectic
Join the Telegram channel for Dialectic: https://t.me/dialecticpod")
