The $11B Bet That Voice Will Replace Everything | Mati Staniszewski x Nikhil Kamath | WTF Online

1. 0:00 – 6:35

   Introduction

   1. NKNikhil Kamath0:00

      [upbeat music]

   2. MSMati Staniszewski0:07

      How many times have you-- this is your f- uh, how many times-

   3. NKNikhil Kamath0:10

      Fifth. Fifth time.

   4. MSMati Staniszewski0:11

      Fifth time.

   5. NKNikhil Kamath0:11

      Yeah. But never for podcast. Always for my fintech company.

   6. MSMati Staniszewski0:15

      Of course, yeah.

   7. NKNikhil Kamath0:16

      Are you in India?

   8. MSMati Staniszewski0:17

      We are.

   9. NKNikhil Kamath0:18

      Yeah?

   10. MSMati Staniszewski0:18

       We have, uh, I think it's between ten and fifteen. I think it's fourteen people now.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath0:23

       Nice.

   12. MSMati Staniszewski0:23

       If, uh, if we count the new people that are joining or joined.

   13. NKNikhil Kamath0:25

       And, and which city?

   14. MSMati Staniszewski0:26

       Mostly Bengaluru and few, uh, close to Mumbai.

   15. NKNikhil Kamath0:29

       I'm from Bengaluru.

   16. MSMati Staniszewski0:31

       Oh, are you, do you-- are you based there or you are part-

   17. NKNikhil Kamath0:33

       Partly based there.

   18. MSMati Staniszewski0:34

       Where is the other part?

   19. NKNikhil Kamath0:35

       Uh, Mumbai and Goa.

   20. MSMati Staniszewski0:37

       Okay. [laughs]

   21. NKNikhil Kamath0:40

       [laughs] What do you think the opportunity is? What can one build in voice that can be a big profitable business tomorrow? You're based out of which city now, Mati?

   22. MSMati Staniszewski1:18

       From London.

   23. NKNikhil Kamath1:19

       Right, from London. Do you know Carl, the Nothing guy?

   24. MSMati Staniszewski1:22

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.

   25. NKNikhil Kamath1:24

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're investors of his.

   26. MSMati Staniszewski1:25

       Oh, no way.

   27. NKNikhil Kamath1:26

       Yeah.

   28. MSMati Staniszewski1:26

       I'm a tiny investor too.

   29. NKNikhil Kamath1:27

       Really?

   30. MSMati Staniszewski1:28

       Yeah. What-
2. 6:35 – 13:24

   Voice as the next tech interface

   1. NKNikhil Kamath6:35

      How does that transition from that kind of hardware to voice happen?

   2. MSMati Staniszewski6:41

      Yeah. The-- You know, like as, as we think about the future, hundred percent voice will be a big interface and big way of how we interact with the technology around us.

   3. NKNikhil Kamath6:51

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MSMati Staniszewski6:52

      That's, that's we think about ElevenLabs' mission. It's to transform how we interact with technology around, uh, holistically, and whether that's, you know, calling in to customer support, whether that's how you will learn, uh, at school and how you'll deliver education, all the way through to how you interact with the robots or devices around you in the future. Um, and k- to your last part, like, I think the most exciting part of that is like h- could you have the technology kind of fold into the background, the phone goes back into the pocket, and you kind of immerse yourself in the, in the, in the, in the world around you? Um, so I think there's like, to make this possible, there's at least three things that need to happen. One is, of course, the foundational technology and research. It needs to get to the level where, where you feel like you're interacting with a voice at the level of, of, of a human. It's, it's-- You can interact-- you can interrupt it, it has the right emotions, intonation, and it's quick. Um, it has the high intelligence. And I think the current model is, is good for set of, um, set of use cases. It's not yet like a full human level. Um, so that's the kind of the first component that needs to change on the, on like, that needs to be true, otherwise people will not want to have voice agents arou- everywhere around you. Um, like you have Jarvis in Iron Man-

   5. NKNikhil Kamath8:09

      Mm-hmm

   6. MSMati Staniszewski8:09

      ...and this kind of level of quality. That's ideally where you kind of get to, uh, where it's both great voice and, and, and kind of gets all the knowledge and gets all that combination. So that's the first thing. So the voice, voice quality and interaction needs to be great. Um, second, and that goes a little bit to, to the challenges of deploying that in different, in different settings, is it's of course important that the voice is good, but it's also important that it has the knowledge access. Um, and as like we think about the, the, the, the development in the future, as we think about our role in the development, increasingly, there's a, an important combination of, of allowing customers, allowing users to bring that knowledge in an easy way, whether that's the integrations with their, with their systems, whether that's figuring out how you can deploy, um, the voice agent in, in WhatsApp and different devices that customers or people will interact with. Um, but ultimately like how do you bring all the knowledge ahead? How do you have the memory of things that, that happened in the past, whether that's what you, what you are interested in, what you know, um, if you are a, a business customer taking the CRM data and pulling that in so you have all that information. So that'll be my second one. So-

   7. NKNikhil Kamath9:16

      Mm-hmm

   8. MSMati Staniszewski9:17

      ...that's the, the second. And third one, uh, which we kind of started the conversation from is the, is the form factor-

   9. NKNikhil Kamath9:22

      Mm-hmm

   10. MSMati Staniszewski9:22

       ...which I don't think is, it has been figured out. Like, now we have all the components for a voice agent to be there and understand you. How do you deploy it? My take is, uh, it's like, you know, frequently the conversation is, is it glasses, is it phone, uh, is it headphones? And it's probably the, the, the kind of the, uh, the least interesting one, but I think it's all will be a combination of, of, of diff- form factors. Some people will definitely prefer glasses, some people will prefer the headphones. In the future, maybe Neuralink is version of that part-

   11. NKNikhil Kamath9:53

       Mm-hmm

   12. MSMati Staniszewski9:53

       ...where you kind of start and you always have voice agent available to you. Um, I'm excited for the headphones, but not the headphones that, um, that are in ear, but effectively the ones that are behind the ear.

   13. NKNikhil Kamath10:05

       Right.

   14. MSMati Staniszewski10:05

       Um, where you still get the same voice experience.

   15. NKNikhil Kamath10:08

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MSMati Staniszewski10:09

       Um, and now there's set of innovations to try to effectively detect your-- without you actually saying the spoken word, detecting your mouth movements. So you could theoretically imagine speaking with a voice agent without vocalizing it out loud and having that support. Um, so like if I were like as a user, so from personal perspective, I would be most likely to adopt the headphones in the future.

   17. NKNikhil Kamath10:31

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MSMati Staniszewski10:31

       Um, and then I do think it most likely will be the most natural form factor, given it's already one of the, one of the key devices. Um, and that kind of shifts that, that interface, you know, in a different way.

   19. NKNikhil Kamath10:44

       So you would say headphones with the phone in your pocket?

   20. MSMati Staniszewski10:46

       Yes.

   21. NKNikhil Kamath10:47

       A combination of the two.

   22. MSMati Staniszewski10:48

       Yes. And probably as some, you know, because you also need the capture of the information.

   23. NKNikhil Kamath10:52

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MSMati Staniszewski10:52

       That's where that kind of the knowledge part will come, start coming in. I, I do think there will be some version of a, of a pendant or a wristband that you will, that you will carry to just capture more-

   25. NKNikhil Kamath11:02

       Can the headphones do that?

   26. MSMati Staniszewski11:03

       They could, but then you have, you, you have limited set of information. Like you don't have the same, um, like say over time you will want something about the movement-

   27. NKNikhil Kamath11:13

       Mm-hmm

   28. MSMati Staniszewski11:13

       ...or something about how you, um, how you capture a different perspective, and I think that's where that will be, that will be valuable.

   29. NKNikhil Kamath11:21

       Do you have-- Can you venture a guess on what, uh, Jony Ive and Sam are building in terms of device?

   30. MSMati Staniszewski11:29

       Uh, the, um... I heard few, few guesses.
3. 13:24 – 20:12

   Competing with OpenAI and big labs

   1. NKNikhil Kamath13:24

      worry you, right? Like, I always wonder about OpenAI. All these people use the backbone of OpenAI, and they build something. And then given enough time, OpenAI sees it, and then they want to build the same thing themselves. They seem to have done that in a couple of places. Um, when I talk to friends of mine in the agentic layer of AI or people who have built great applications on top of a model, uh, they all seem to be scared of what happens to these large language models when they come after the end product. Are you worried about that?

   2. MSMati Staniszewski14:00

      You know, like in a, in, in our case, we are of course continuously looking what are, like OpenAI, Google, incredible teams, and probably like as we think about the space, the, the, the biggest potentials of, uh, of, of, of effectively competing with ElevenLabs. As you think about the company, and I only started it in 2022, like the approach from the beginning was doing both the research and the product. So doing the foundational model work for, for audio and then building product around it. And we think both are important, um, and like would define the company where we today of course don't depend on OpenAI for, for, for voice and, and we can stay ahead and build models that are both great in English, great internationally, great across India languages, great across European languages. And, um, and that's both for generating speech with text to speech, understanding speech with speech to text, and, um, and that's important. I think like over the next two, three years, there's still so much you can do in voice, and like we spoke about how you make it more fluid and interactive. I think that still can be cracked in a better way. So of course worries us whether we continue being ahead-

   3. NKNikhil Kamath15:10

      Mm

   4. MSMati Staniszewski15:10

      ... but it's also good motivation. We have-- my, my co-founder is one of the smartest people.

   5. NKNikhil Kamath15:14

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MSMati Staniszewski15:14

      He's been able to assemble a, an incredible research team, and, um, and they keep crushing it, so-

   7. NKNikhil Kamath15:19

      Mm-hmm

   8. MSMati Staniszewski15:20

      ... I think they will, they will, they will continue proving that we can be ahead. But then 100%, you know, we cannot just rely on research. We need to have more, um, both defense points, but also how we deliver value effectively to the customers, so it's kind of independent of the research work. And here, from our perspective, we have kind of two mia- main things. One is, um, we have a creative platform offering and then an agents platform offering. Creative platform is helping with narrations, voiceovers-

   9. NKNikhil Kamath15:48

      Mm-hmm

   10. MSMati Staniszewski15:49

       ... localization, um, from individuals, so from creators, uh, podcasters, um-

   11. NKNikhil Kamath15:56

       Mm-hmm

   12. MSMati Staniszewski15:56

       ... news articles, uh, through to some media entertainment companies like Star.

   13. NKNikhil Kamath16:00

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MSMati Staniszewski16:00

       And then on agents, we help automate voice agents and, and, and, and customer experience, training, education. So, um, Amisha would be a great example.

   15. NKNikhil Kamath16:09

       Can you, can you describe to us what ElevenLabs does overall, like in a, in a simplified manner that anybody could understand?

   16. MSMati Staniszewski16:18

       We built foundational audio AI technology. So we built models to make speech sound incredible and speech be understood. Um, and then we built products on top of that research that help you create voice agents that can elevate your customer experience, that can, um, elevate, um, a- and, and train people internally or externally. And then we help on the creative side with customers, uh, um, um, um, um, and how they can communicate with, with their user base.

   17. NKNikhil Kamath16:48

       So 50% of your business is creator and 50% is enterprise in a way?

   18. MSMati Staniszewski16:52

       That's right.

   19. NKNikhil Kamath16:53

       And say I'm a creator. How do I use ElevenLabs?

   20. MSMati Staniszewski16:58

       The, mm, let's take this podcast as an example.

   21. NKNikhil Kamath17:01

       Yeah.

   22. MSMati Staniszewski17:02

       The, you know, after, after we, we, we, we, we've finalized our conversation, something might have not been recorded.

   23. NKNikhil Kamath17:09

       Mm.

   24. MSMati Staniszewski17:09

       You want to add a line.

   25. NKNikhil Kamath17:11

       Mm-hmm.

   26. MSMati Staniszewski17:11

       You can post-process that with ElevenLabs, make sure that we effectively recreate my voice. We smoothen that line out.

   27. NKNikhil Kamath17:19

       Mm-hmm.

   28. MSMati Staniszewski17:20

       That's the first simple part. Then let's take a second step. You wanna take this podcast, and you want to localize it outside of English. You wanna bring it to Spanish or French or Hindi.

   29. NKNikhil Kamath17:29

       Mm.

   30. MSMati Staniszewski17:29

       Um, and here you go to our interface, and you can both automatically dub the entire podcast and then go through any corrections that you need. So when we did a podcast, um, with, between Lex Fridman and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that was effectively going through that workflow.
4. 20:12 – 27:39

   Preserving emotion in dubbed content

   1. NKNikhil Kamath20:12

      certain thing. Mati is the right way to say it?

   2. MSMati Staniszewski20:14

      Yeah, yeah.

   3. NKNikhil Kamath20:14

      Yeah.

   4. MSMati Staniszewski20:14

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. NKNikhil Kamath20:15

      Uh, when you smile when you say a certain thing in English, isn't it hard to take that emotion into Hindi, for example?

   6. MSMati Staniszewski20:24

      The, um, uh, no, it's, um, you know, it's, it's not easy 100%.

   7. NKNikhil Kamath20:30

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MSMati Staniszewski20:31

      Um, and then there's like kind of two of-- like there's the present and the future. In the current way, you would still translate it. You would of course dub it. I think you can preserve the emotion, but of course my movement of my lips-

   9. NKNikhil Kamath20:43

      Yeah

   10. MSMati Staniszewski20:43

       ... when I smile will... You-- That, depending on the language structure, um, it might be in a different part of the sentence. So like maybe an easy example is German.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath20:52

       Yeah.

   12. MSMati Staniszewski20:53

       From English to German, German usually will have noun at the end. So like yes, that will exactly happen. You will like smile at a different part than-

   13. NKNikhil Kamath20:59

       Mm-hmm

   14. MSMati Staniszewski20:59

       ... than the conversation. You can do some tricks to, to try to, to, to, to, to, um, to still smoothen it out. Um, but yes, there will be some discrepancy. So that's, that's in present can still work. In the future, you know, and, and there are some limitations of the current delivery softwares. You'll likely do a lip animation too or lip reanimation to move the lips a tiny bit to apply to where, where you would smile in that part of the sentence. So I think that will happen 100%. I hope this happens this year.

   15. NKNikhil Kamath21:30

       Is that something you would do?

   16. MSMati Staniszewski21:32

       We would want to do it. I think like as we think about anything that can amplify the audio experience, we want to bring that into our, our, our, our flow. So on that creative side, like today if you were to localize, hopefully in the next few months you will be able to, um, animate lips straight away as well.

   17. NKNikhil Kamath21:48

       Could a tiny company be built just around this? Just around changing how the lip moves when something is being dubbed?

   18. MSMati Staniszewski21:58

       It could. There's, there's actually good set of companies that are like crushing it and going very quickly.

   19. NKNikhil Kamath22:03

       Right.

   20. MSMati Staniszewski22:03

       You know, of course, I think this is an entry point, not the end point.

   21. NKNikhil Kamath22:06

       Mm-hmm.

   22. MSMati Staniszewski22:06

       They will likely try to, to add more of that functionality but, but, uh, but 100%. You know, it's like... And the, the, the-- of course, now we speak about the static part.

   23. NKNikhil Kamath22:16

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MSMati Staniszewski22:16

       But the moment you start moving into the real-time part, those tiny companies now can be huge companies. And that's kinda like, you know, we spoke about the creative side. If you think about the, the, the agent side, and I think there are some use cases here for, for, for, for both the lip animation and even for, for, for your-- for you-

   25. NKNikhil Kamath22:35

       Mm-hmm

   26. MSMati Staniszewski22:35

       ... um, uh, uh, I have a, I have one idea for you. Um, so you know, we spoke about the creative side. On the agent side, effectively what we do is, is, is allow you to create a voice experience, bring any knowledge that, that, that you want inside of that experience, um, and, um, and then deploy that in, in, in different settings, um, while monitoring, evaluating how it performs. I don't know if you're familiar with Masterclass.

   27. NKNikhil Kamath23:01

       Yeah.

   28. MSMati Staniszewski23:01

       So Masterclass works with us where they would recreate, um, and work with people like Gordon Ramsay-

   29. NKNikhil Kamath23:07

       Mm-hmm

   30. MSMati Staniszewski23:08

       ... to create AI Gordon Ramsay to teaches you how to cook while you cook.
5. 27:39 – 35:09

   Building profitable voice businesses today

   1. MSMati Staniszewski27:39

      shift everything.

   2. NKNikhil Kamath27:39

      So a lot of the audience that we speak to are young wannabe entrepreneurs. What do you think the opportunity is? What can one build in voice that can be a big profitable business tomorrow?

   3. MSMati Staniszewski27:54

      From my perspective, the, the most clear entry point is combining a domain expertise in one of the, one of the domains that you, you know well or you want to know well and learn quickly. Um, and it can be a domain where, where there's like no innovation, and these are like almost the best ones. And people-

   4. NKNikhil Kamath28:11

      Can you give me an example?

   5. MSMati Staniszewski28:13

      Automotive industry, healthcare. I mean, it's like truly, I think it's like mmm, the more traditional domain, the likely more lagging it is w-with the innovation, um, where we are seeing already entrepreneurs building for automotive industry of use cases. Um, but effectively here, you know, whether it's, um, uh, how... It's like f-f-from the simplest case of how you innovate on customer experience to like what is the in-car experience look like in the future? So much opportunity to figure out how do you deliver the right knowledge, how do you write the right interaction, and how you deploy it.

   6. NKNikhil Kamath28:48

      But can I build a company just around that?

   7. MSMati Staniszewski28:50

      Yes. Yes.

   8. NKNikhil Kamath28:52

      So-

   9. MSMati Staniszewski28:53

      And it's like, you know, like-

   10. NKNikhil Kamath28:53

       Let's take the example of a car company, say BMW. What, what do I build that they will pay me enough for that I can have a company in voice?

   11. MSMati Staniszewski29:04

       You would start probably with something that's top of mind and, and something that is easy to deploy. So here you would start with customer experience side. So just being able to help as people call in, how do they get the best service, understanding everything about BMW in this case.

   12. NKNikhil Kamath29:21

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MSMati Staniszewski29:21

       How they understand about how the car works. You, you spend a lot of time on, um, bringing that into the equation. So that's kind of the first layer. Then in-car experience is like pretty open-ended, but how do you create an interactive radio inside of the car that people can, can interact with-

   14. NKNikhil Kamath29:39

       Mm-hmm

   15. MSMati Staniszewski29:39

       ... um, across all the time? And here too, you need to figure out what type of languages might BMW might be interested in. How do you create the right voices to make sure the users in those regions are excited and happy? Um, what type of experience will BMW actually need? So there's a lot of actually deployment work that would come in. And then as you build all those steps, you need to figure out, okay, if you are to build like a, a big company, not only how I build it once for BMW, but how I abstract it away to, to be able to replicate that into the other car companies. Um, so you need to capture some of those knowledge elements back into, into, into other, uh, into other car, uh, parts. Automotive industry is a, is a good example where I like haven't seen as much yet because it's, it's hard with some of the on-device requirements. Like, some that already are getting disrupted are e-commerce, healthcare, financial services. Like, healthcare is a easy example where you just need so much specific domain knowledge to be able to, to cater to that. Both the data is very different-So capturing all the, all the medicine names, uh, all, all the flows that might need to happen for the patients that you interact with-

   16. NKNikhil Kamath30:49

       Mm-hmm

   17. MSMati Staniszewski30:49

       ... to make sure that they get the right experience, that's like, it's hard.

   18. NKNikhil Kamath30:54

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MSMati Staniszewski30:54

       And then you need to go to the hospitals, speak with the hospitals on how the, the to deploy that, whether it's in the operating space or whether it's in the, in the, in the, in the, in the support space outside of the, uh, in-hospital operation. So that's, that's the one that's act- already pretty, pretty heavily going across. Um, e-commerce, I mean, recently you had IPO of Meesho that-

   20. NKNikhil Kamath31:15

       Yeah

   21. MSMati Staniszewski31:15

       ... that you work with, incredible company.

   22. NKNikhil Kamath31:17

       What do you do for Meesho?

   23. MSMati Staniszewski31:19

       So we help automate their customer, customer experience, customer support.

   24. NKNikhil Kamath31:22

       Mm.

   25. MSMati Staniszewski31:22

       So they have now 60,000 calls coming in, um, to, to, to ask about the products-

   26. NKNikhil Kamath31:29

       Mm

   27. MSMati Staniszewski31:29

       ... ask about shipping, refund, and in Hindi and in English, and, and we help, we create a voice agent that you can interact with. But a very cool thing with Meesho is that-

   28. NKNikhil Kamath31:38

       Mm

   29. MSMati Staniszewski31:38

       ... now, you know, so the support is there, like, what's the future of e-commerce? Could you have an AI concierge the moment you go into the website that you open a website, you have a voice agent that tells you about the products available, you tell it what you're looking for, then shows you different products, you decide which ones you are interested in, and then you order that. Like, having an assistant as part of experience would be, would be incredible. Um, so here too, like I think in e-commerce, going slightly deeper on like s- s- what type of e-commerce, similar. I think, I think companies combining the domain knowledge and, and, and building quickly the, the voice agents will, will, will be huge.

   30. NKNikhil Kamath32:16

       Actually, you should help us build a agent of our own. Could be fun as a project.
6. 35:09 – 42:29

   AI valuations and global opportunity

   1. NKNikhil Kamath35:10

      You've raised a lot of money yourself, I think like $300, $400 million. Your company's worth a few billions today. What do you think of AI valuations in the Valley today? These huge, uh, companies with a revenue number that doesn't historically warrant the market cap numbers that they have. Do you feel like there's a bubble brewing there?

   2. MSMati Staniszewski35:40

      And did you say you, you invest in the companies not in Silicon Valley, or you said, did you invest in companies in Silicon Valley?

   3. NKNikhil Kamath35:46

      Some in Silicon Valley, but largely companies out of, uh, India.

   4. MSMati Staniszewski35:51

      That's what I thought, and, and first of all, I think that's great. I-

   5. NKNikhil Kamath35:53

      Mm

   6. MSMati Staniszewski35:53

      ... it's like, uh, similarly as we think, uh, like it's so cool to see more companies in, in, in India. Like we care so much about companies brewing, and I'm from Poland, in Poland-

   7. NKNikhil Kamath36:08

      Mm

   8. MSMati Staniszewski36:08

      ... in, in, in UK of course. Um, so s- and, and like as we think about our team today, most of the recent engineering is from Europe, and they are like some of the most motivated, passionate people about the space. So like hopefully a lot more of that innovation comes across f- from, from Asia, from Europe, internationally for the global companies. Um, I think the, the valuations in Silicon Valley, you know, like I don't think the, the, the bubble is brewing.

   9. NKNikhil Kamath36:35

      Mm.

   10. MSMati Staniszewski36:35

       I think there's like... What, what I think is a very different part as I compare it to, to, to other cycles, I think there's a clear value, clear revenue numbers for a lot of the, the companies.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath36:44

       Mm.

   12. MSMati Staniszewski36:45

       I do-- You know, there are some pockets where I'm, like, a little bit skeptic of, like, does it make sense, you know, not to just... Like to maybe give a concrete example is all the, like, GPU providers, um, that are built on top of Nvidia that, like, help you get, uh, e-effectively inference, um, uh, um, capacity.

   13. NKNikhil Kamath37:05

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MSMati Staniszewski37:06

       Like, I'm a little bit skeptic on some evaluations there, but, you know, like, for a lot of others, it's very clear it's, like, high risk, high reward type thing. Um, so I understand the bets-

   15. NKNikhil Kamath37:15

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MSMati Staniszewski37:15

       But they are probably higher risk than higher, higher reward. I do think AI is, is in this, in this, in this trickier space where, um, where if you win, you can win in a, in a significant way, in a significant impactful way. Like, you will work with a lot of the customers around the world if you are a good company. Um, so I kind of understand why, like, in the early stages of the companies, companies get such a high valuation. I mean, y- I, uh, y- I'm sure you are referring also to a lot of the research companies being formed. Here, here it's like almost the way I kind of s-see it is there's like, um, like, research is still so incredibly important and will be that, um, that, that-- like, that multiple still makes sense. Like, you, you-- those people, like, if they invent one incredible thing, it, it's already worth it. Um, well, but I hope, I hope companies around the world will get the same valuations, uh, soon. And if we-- It's like if they build globally, they should.

   17. NKNikhil Kamath38:09

       Yeah. The way I'm looking at it with all the geopolitical stuff going on, if I were to wager a guess, I would think at some point in the future, we will all live in a more multipolar world where we-- individually countries go down the path of Russia and China, where most large countries have their versions, their own little version of these products which have global reach today. So different countries will have their own social media. They'll have their own voice companies. They'll have their own, uh, uh, most interactions with technology, even their own data centers. A country's data, I think, will sit in that country. So I feel like when that happens in the world, these companies which have large scale today, like, you know, take a WhatsApp, which is a chatting service. I don't think it is a unique enough of a product that can't be disrupted, or I will make the switch from a WhatsApp to another chatting service given a very small incentive. I think the, the reasons for Indians to use WhatsApp might go away, uh, when the world becomes more geopolitically confused, and I feel like it's going in that direction.

   18. MSMati Staniszewski39:29

       Don't you think, like, let's take WhatsApp, there's, like, a network effect of just so many users already using WhatsApp where it just, it's just convenience of being on the same platform?

   19. NKNikhil Kamath39:39

       I would have thought that, but when I look at what's happening in China and Russia, and they have their own versions, it seems to be just fine. Uh, and also in a way, when there is evidence of these global tools being weaponized by governments in one way or another, uh, I think the world will be a lot more skeptical in using a product just for the network benefit. You know what I mean?

   20. MSMati Staniszewski40:06

       I, I do. I know what you mean, although I do, I do disagree. I think it's all-- partly disagree.

   21. NKNikhil Kamath40:12

       Mm-hmm.

   22. MSMati Staniszewski40:12

       I, like, I agree. Data residency, yes, hundred percent should be in a, in a specific countries. Also agree that, like, the, the, the, the, sorry, the product shape, uh, will, will, like, kind of evolve. So, like, every country will use their own, own propriety data to create their variations of the product.

   23. NKNikhil Kamath40:34

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MSMati Staniszewski40:34

       But my, like, you know... I don't know if that's, uh, op-optimist or, or, like, the, the, the kind of the value part, but I do think there's, like, a global component of, of a lot of infrastructure or software still being international. Like, let's take building foundational AI models. I think the, the, kind of the, the base will be pre-trained by-

   25. NKNikhil Kamath40:55

       Mm-hmm

   26. MSMati Staniszewski40:55

       ... few companies in the world, just given the resources required. There'll be open source, um, um, um, um, of course, um, offerings, uh, in that, in that bucket. But then probably must have been like a government space or companies in a lot of the sectors, they will use those to fine-tune it based on their data, and it's still huge advantages.

   27. NKNikhil Kamath41:13

       Mm-hmm.

   28. MSMati Staniszewski41:13

       Uh, but just, uh, just not, like, entirely built into independently. Um, on the product, there's a very, like, I mean, interesting, interesting that you think... I, I can see, like, how creating software is becoming so easy that you could, like, imagine creating that on the, on the fly everywhere. I just, I just think the network effect of having people on the same place-

   29. NKNikhil Kamath41:33

       Mm-hmm

   30. MSMati Staniszewski41:34

       ... is compounding in many ways.
7. 42:29 – 49:51

   Geopolitics reshaping trust in tech platforms

   1. NKNikhil Kamath42:29

      right?

   2. MSMati Staniszewski42:30

      I hope, I hope it's, you know, it's a temporary glitch-

   3. NKNikhil Kamath42:32

      Mm-hmm

   4. MSMati Staniszewski42:32

      ... but it's, like, more, like, it's not, um, it's not going down. It's more like sine X times X curve-

   5. NKNikhil Kamath42:37

      [laughs]

   6. MSMati Staniszewski42:37

      ... when it's continuing going up and-

   7. NKNikhil Kamath42:39

      Yeah

   8. MSMati Staniszewski42:39

      ... and, and, and it's, yeah, it's just-

   9. NKNikhil Kamath42:41

      Yeah

   10. MSMati Staniszewski42:41

       ... like a little bit of a correction.

   11. NKNikhil Kamath42:43

       Yeah. I mean, I watched a bunch of these people speak over the last week, and, you know, even when they walk out of the room, it could be the European leadership or the American leadershipPeople don't look happy. People look like they're angrier than they were last year, for example-

   12. MSMati Staniszewski43:02

       [chuckles]

   13. NKNikhil Kamath43:02

       ... or the year before. Every year people are progressively angrier, and it seems like they're voicing it for the first time. You know, people walk out and speak in their own languages. Most of it you can't understand, but you can see the expression on their face in a way, I think.

   14. MSMati Staniszewski43:18

       I do think people became more authentic in the like, like last year or two-

   15. NKNikhil Kamath43:21

       Yeah

   16. MSMati Staniszewski43:21

       ... last year or two. Maybe it's like in a version of like, there's just so much AI content-

   17. NKNikhil Kamath43:26

       Yeah

   18. MSMati Staniszewski43:26

       ... and, and things that like-

   19. NKNikhil Kamath43:27

       Yeah

   20. MSMati Staniszewski43:27

       ... you need to be authentic to, to, to, to like break through that noise of AI.

   21. NKNikhil Kamath43:32

       Yeah.

   22. MSMati Staniszewski43:32

       But, um, I feel, you know, in, in less on the politics side or geopolitics side, because I agree-

   23. NKNikhil Kamath43:38

       Mm-hmm

   24. MSMati Staniszewski43:38

       ... that's like that has definitely w- influenced the emotions. Um, and I'm probably a little bit too much in that bubble of, of AI and tech-

   25. NKNikhil Kamath43:45

       Mm-hmm

   26. MSMati Staniszewski43:45

       ... but huge, huge positivity compared to last year or two of like shift from how bad, how much of the risk it pose, po-po, like f- um, how much of the risk AI can mean, but increasingly into also how much opportunity AI can, can give. Um, but of course, it's such a, such a tricky week of geopolitics this week, so.

   27. NKNikhil Kamath44:06

       I think ev- no one's contesting that productivity will go up in societies. I think everybody's aligned to that. Uh, the only question is should you be... People with most risk capital will have the best models by virtue of how much money they pump into those models. But if these large model companies are going to cannibalize the end product if you build on top of them, I think for a young entrepreneur, it's important not to be short-sighted and kinda like diversify and hedge what they build on top of. Uh, not, it's not a, it's not the right analogy, but not end up in a world where an Android or an Apple can charge you twenty percent fee to live on that platform, but use more open-sourced versions and diversify that risk, I think is important today.

   28. MSMati Staniszewski45:06

       I agree that like, you know, you need to take a like a longer term view, and f- it's like the, the, the starting point can prevent you from being in that, in that, in that long term. So, you know, if you, if you, if you can accelerate your value delivery by building on any of the platforms, it's fine. But if, if there, if you think, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you think that any of those platforms might take over your space in next few years, um, then yeah, then you need to be, you need to be cautious.

   29. NKNikhil Kamath45:35

       Because these platforms have to make money somewhere tomorrow. I saw OpenAI is experimenting with ads for the first time, but to justify those valuations and to stop burning money, they have to make money.

   30. MSMati Staniszewski45:47

       They do. It's like almost the, you know, the, um, like Google will have so much advantage by-
8. 49:51 – 56:40

   Designing a new social media platform

   1. NKNikhil Kamath49:51

      places like that.

   2. MSMati Staniszewski49:52

      Why did you want to start a social media?

   3. NKNikhil Kamath49:54

      Uh, I believe social media is broken today. Uh, we were looking at data from a bunch of people that the really young people, sixteen to twenty, uh, take Snapchat, for example. They might be spending-- They might be logging into Snapchat the same number of times, but the amount of time they're spending on it is significantly lower. If you take Instagram, it's become almost no organic content. Like Mati will not post a picture of his, you know, I don't know, you having a drink on a weekend, nor will I or nor will anybody.

   4. MSMati Staniszewski50:29

      Yeah.

   5. NKNikhil Kamath50:29

      None of my friends. It seems to be a place where brands are showcasing different things and influencers are trying to sell one thing or the other, either consciously or subconsciously. Uh, to have an app which is not governed by an algorithm which kinda insinuates and incentivizes a reaction in you by triggering, uh, hate or, uh, uh, emotion that I don't think is conducive in the long term, I think is useful. Also, I don't like the fact that a foreign nation controls the algorithm that defines the mood, nature, and evolution of the youth of my country.

   6. MSMati Staniszewski51:19

      And in the incentive side, do you have a take of how, like, how you change the incentives to get people to post the organic side?

   7. NKNikhil Kamath51:26

      Uh, I think we are thinking of a very, like, very tight funnel on the top where we control who enters the app. Like incumbent social media probably has bots engaging with you and trolls engaging with you, and I don't know how much of it is organic and how much of it is not. But the idea is to have a place where real people can connect with real people, speak about real things without-- I don't think anybody can take out bias altogether, but with significantly lower b-bias, and a place which is safe to have discourse. You know, I, I might agree with you on something, I might disagree with you on something, but I don't think there is a place or ecosystem today where you can have that conversation, so we hope to kinda create it. But I'd love, uh, you know, advice from you. Broad thoughts on what should a new social media have. Also, how voice plays a part in whatever the newer version of social media is.

   8. MSMati Staniszewski52:33

      Uh, first of all, I think you're, you're not, like, the aspiration or the idea, like, I mean, as I, I agree with. Uh, like, I, I hope even the current social media platforms will get there too. Like you, you know, like, I think there's a clear aspiration for them to have, like, a little bit more of the positive sentiment rather than kind of the, the, the, the, the fear driving the, the, the, the algorithm. And I, I, I don't know if, you know, like, I don't know how this will get figured out yet, but there's definitely this element of, like, authenticity being now the, the way to go. Like, nobody wants to read, like, a corporate, you know, like manicured press release statements, and I think that's, that's great. So if I were designing social media, it's like how do I get more of, of, of that, uh, part would be, uh, like one of the key elements. Um, I'm thinking through, through both the, the kind of the voice aspect and, um, um... Do you know AirChat, by the way? Do you see-- Have you seen AirChat?

   9. NKNikhil Kamath53:28

      I have seen AirChat, yes.

   10. MSMati Staniszewski53:30

       They're trying-

   11. NKNikhil Kamath53:30

       Right

   12. MSMati Staniszewski53:30

       ... to build like a social media based on voice and podcasts.

   13. NKNikhil Kamath53:33

       Mm-hmm. We do have that moat that we already have. Like, I think our podcast is very, like, entrepreneur heavy. We try and tell people how to, A, start a company, and then we try and help them on the path of starting a company. We have a grant, we give them some money, we try and build a network for them to go out and build. Uh, so it can be pivoted around a podcast not just of mine, but of a bunch of people who have the same outcome in mind.

   14. MSMati Staniszewski54:05

       Mm-hmm. So maybe, you know, like kind of starting the kind of opposite way on the, on the voice side first, like I could imagine the whole interface very, being very different where you, you kind of f- the same way you would imagine Alexa or Siri delivering you the knowledge or some version of, of Jarvis where, like, you wake up, you want to learn what happens on the social media and, and it kind of summarizes things that are interesting to you, and you can ask questions, go deeper. Like for me, that would be like part one, where social media comes with like embedded assistant that kind of k-keeps you up to date on what's happening, and you can engage with that. Where, where I could like, "Oh, leave a comment here," or, "Hey, engage with this part," or, "Respond to this person." And you could, you could, like, imagine both responses both being text or, or voice directly. So that, that would be like a first, like a very shift into like the static timeline view into more of like interactive companion view. Um, so that would be one component of this. Two, yeah, I'm, uh, I'm kind of, I'm hesitating because I'm thinking like how would I incentivize the people? And that's the tricky part. But like I do think there, you know, if you, uh, if you record a video message from you, like that's, that's great. Second to that, you record audio message, image, then text. So if you could haveA, a, a voice as part of that would be great. Simple version of that on social media could be like, you know, you write a, you write a post or you write a, an essay, and I can listen to that in your voice and, and, and, and enjoy it. But that's, that's kind of part of how can I leave the messages and comment a-across, uh, would be another, another big one. Three, which is both on language level but on the voice level, making it straight international, translated and, and then, and then enjoyed across languages would be, would be another one. Um, but look, I think it's a very tricky, tricky one, um, in terms of like the incentive side. Like how do you shift that? Uh, you, you know, you're probably more familiar given, given, given your work of like, uh, tokenize based or, or like incentive, monetary incentive based approaches. I'm not... I-It's like I, I can see this working, but I'm not a big fan. I don't like this like kind of transactional approach. Like it should not be that. Ideally, you like engage because you're interested rather than because y-you think it can give you like the monetary award.

   15. NKNikhil Kamath56:20

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MSMati Staniszewski56:20

       Like it should be a secondary versus primary effect. Um, I think, you know, like the, the... what, what Sean to be working... I, I think the verification side, I would keep the verification side.

   17. NKNikhil Kamath56:30

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MSMati Staniszewski56:30

       I think it's valuable for people to know that the, the other side is, is a, a, a real person.

   19. NKNikhil Kamath56:35

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MSMati Staniszewski56:36

       And then over time, there'll be a, a question of how you verify for, for human

9. 56:40 – 59:38

   Incentivising authenticity over negativity

   1. MSMati Staniszewski56:40

      part. I think that's going to be another big topic, but I would, um, I would have that. If I was creating social media, I would bring that as a big part of the equation. Um, uh, the... I'm still thinking about the incentive part. Like how, how would I incentivize the positivity versus the negativity? And that's-

   2. NKNikhil Kamath56:57

      Mm-hmm

   3. MSMati Staniszewski56:57

      ... uh, that's, that's, that's, you know, like almost the world got at, at some places calibrated this way where negativity gets more attention.

   4. NKNikhil Kamath57:06

      Yeah.

   5. MSMati Staniszewski57:06

      And like how do you shift that? Is it just giving more-

   6. NKNikhil Kamath57:09

      It doesn't even have to be positivity. It could be neutrality.

   7. MSMati Staniszewski57:13

      Positivity, like, you know, like, like... But then, um, uh-

   8. NKNikhil Kamath57:17

      Like if you're gonna trigger a emotion, like say the emotion could be greed, the emotion could be to pontificate. By being here, you sound smarter. This is a bunch of people who are trying to feed curiosity. Uh, there's a bunch of thing, other emotions that you can play with which are more on the right if the curve is left being negativity and right being positivity. You're more towards the right.

   9. MSMati Staniszewski57:45

      No, I agree. I... It's, it's, you know, like I think the, the, the key thing is you want to avoid the, the kind of the algorithm just rewarding what gives the, the highest, um, uh, knee-jerk reaction.

   10. NKNikhil Kamath57:56

       Correct.

   11. MSMati Staniszewski57:57

       Um, and, and it's like, it's like if you could have a platform that like inspires curiosity and, and like, and learning or like different points of view in a way that doesn't lead to just like two sides screaming at each other, incredible.

   12. NKNikhil Kamath58:10

       Yeah.

   13. MSMati Staniszewski58:10

       I mean, I-

   14. NKNikhil Kamath58:11

       Maybe we, maybe we can work on this together. You can take care of the voice part of it.

   15. MSMati Staniszewski58:15

       Let's do it. Let's do it.

   16. NKNikhil Kamath58:15

       Yeah.

   17. MSMati Staniszewski58:15

       It's... I feel like the... It's like the... It's, you know, there, there's no, yet there's no product in the space-

   18. NKNikhil Kamath58:21

       Yeah

   19. MSMati Staniszewski58:21

       ... on the consumer space that has like AI enabled in the right way. So in the-

   20. NKNikhil Kamath58:25

       Yeah. Yeah

   21. MSMati Staniszewski58:25

       ... it's like, uh, there's no AI social product today.

   22. NKNikhil Kamath58:28

       Yeah. Maybe we'll catch up in London or we'll do a con call. I'll add my team and we can ideate. They have some ideas as well.

   23. MSMati Staniszewski58:36

       Or in India.

   24. NKNikhil Kamath58:37

       Yeah, yeah. You're coming in Feb, right?

   25. MSMati Staniszewski58:38

       Exactly. And just for you.

   26. NKNikhil Kamath58:39

       Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, Mati, for doing this. I think we're out of time.

   27. MSMati Staniszewski58:44

       Thank you. Thank you so much.

   28. NKNikhil Kamath58:45

       And we'll catch up soon.

   29. MSMati Staniszewski58:46

       Let's catch up soon, and let's, uh... Thanks. Uh, it's amazing to see how you support the ecosystem, so hopefully, hopefully we can do that too. And, and, and thanks so much.

   30. NKNikhil Kamath58:53

       Thank you. [upbeat music] How long are you there for?

Episode duration: 59:39