Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
00:31:41 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:31:41] S1: There's so many aspects of this and definitely something also that's really important to think about and to continue thinking about as AI gets better in all the different facets that exist. And I think a huge component of this is education. Being aware or creating that awareness in in the public that AI can now be almost anywhere and to have a critical eye when being confronted with a a piece of content. The first pieces of this, I think, I remember when Photoshop was being used more and, like, you would see posters of photographs and you would think, like, oh my god, these people are flawless. And then they'll be like, no. They're... It's... Things are photoshopped. And I think the next shift of seeing or hearing content should be to to think like, is this real or is this generated? So I think there's a huge educational component. But, of course, a single company, like, it would be lazy to say the public just has to be aware and then we solve it. There are also safeguards that we can roll out as as part of developing the tech. And I think every AI company that is innovating at the moment has an ethical responsibility to develop safeguards. [00:32:55] S3: Is it like watermarks? Like the kind of watermarks that
00:32:55 · Cameron Herold, Victoria Weller
[00:32:55] S3: Is it like watermarks? Like the kind of watermarks that [00:32:58] S1: For example for example, watermarks. We have, as an example, what I just mentioned with the voice captures implemented that, but we also have a service called AI speech classifier where you can upload an audio snippet and it will tell you whether it was generated with ElevenLabs. So if you were targeted and and got a a voice memo saying, I'm in trouble. Don't email me. Don't text me. You could upload it to the AI voice classifier. You don't even need an ElevenLabs account for that. And then it will tell you with 90% certainty whether or not it was created. More than 90%, I think. It's like almost a 100% certainty whether it was created with ElevenLabs or not. And that's a really handy tool to have for certainty around audio content. [00:33:49] S3: Is there a person on your team who could do a twenty or thirty minute demo of... And q and a of what ElevenLabs could do? We have, you know, members from 17 countries in our COO Alliance. I would love to get them some exposure to what ElevenLabs is doing. Is there somebody that I can reach out to you later and get them to do a demo via Zoom to our team of of Yeah. Of three to five b to c, a few b to b, etcetera use cases? [00:34:14] S1: Yeah. For sure. I think I I wouldn't even be able able to do that [00:34:19] S3: That would be amazing. [00:34:20] S1: Put you in touch with someone from the revenue team that is closer to the enterprise customers.
00:34:20 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:34:20] S1: Put you in touch with someone from the revenue team that is closer to the enterprise customers. [00:34:24] S3: Maybe we'll have you both show up and maybe you can do a q and a on the on the COO side. So is there a tie in? I've got... I've had these... The Facebook Ray Ban glasses for about a year and they've just come out with the newest version of them. Is there a tie in with ElevenLabs and what is going to be happening with the AR glasses? So that if I'm looking at a sign, like I just walked into my Airbnb in Mexico and there's a sign and I can't read it. And is there an opportunity to have that translated but then read to me? Are you working on that kind of technology or does that already exist? [00:34:57] S1: Not at the moment. So in a way, yes. Like, if if the company of those glasses would want to incorporate that, they could easily build on top of ElevenLabs. They wouldn't even have to get an enterprise account with any of our self serve accounts. You get access to our APIs and you can build your own wrapper in a way on top of ElevenLabs. So all that would be needed then is to input the translated text, shoot us an API call, you get back the audio, and it could be read out loud through through those glasses. So it is definitely a use case that ElevenLabs would support, but it is not one that we are working on in house explicitly.
00:34:57 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:34:57] S1: Not at the moment. So in a way, yes. Like, if if the company of those glasses would want to incorporate that, they could easily build on top of ElevenLabs. They wouldn't even have to get an enterprise account with any of our self serve accounts. You get access to our APIs and you can build your own wrapper in a way on top of ElevenLabs. So all that would be needed then is to input the translated text, shoot us an API call, you get back the audio, and it could be read out loud through through those glasses. So it is definitely a use case that ElevenLabs would support, but it is not one that we are working on in house explicitly. [00:35:38] S3: It's a conversion. I don't remember what this is called, but it's a conversion of all of these, like, voice and audio and photo and video that is converging. What's that called in AI right now, the convergence of all this? I'm actually not sure either. It's like multi something or? [00:35:53] S1: Multimodal? [00:35:54] S3: Multimodal. Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's what's really exciting is that I like... Three years ago, I I wore a pair of contact lenses and by moving my eyeball around, I was able to play a song off my iPhone. I was in the lab using it. I'm like, this is crazy that using my eye, can turn on a song on my phone. Like, what the fuck? I think that's gonna be really cool with your technology as well, the ability to have that multimodal kind of interface. [00:36:20] S1: You... You've experienced some cool gadgets, AR gadgets.
00:36:20 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:36:20] S1: You... You've experienced some cool gadgets, AR gadgets. [00:36:24] S3: I'm a geek. I don't know. I like this stuff. So I need to know from from your perspective and from your experience, what is the chief of staff title and where is it now fitting into... Because it's a title that used to be only in government and now is really aggressively migrated into the business world in the last probably ten years.
00:36:43 · Victoria Weller
[00:36:43] S1: Yeah. I think that the chief of staff title, at least in the sense that I've experienced it and now that it is at ElevenLabs, is that I get to fill all the gaps that exist at a small company where the the certain functions and projects haven't been set up sufficiently with their own role or even department. So I joined ElevenLabs, and the first thing I did was compliance. And I'd never thought about compliance before, but I ramped up to understanding what is SOC two compliance, what do we need, how do we get there, and how do we get there as fast as possible. And by adding this last factor of as fast as possible, I was able to make compliance something that's fun for myself, someone who isn't naturally drawn to compliance, and got through the entire SOC two process within seven weeks. And now we have our our SOC two compliance. But that's like one example of of the gaps. The next one was hiring. There are a bunch of internal operations, even taxes, entity setup. All these different things that it takes to to run a company that are a little bit falling through the cracks if you're only 10 to 20 people. Chief of staff gets to pick those up and and carry those across the line. And those are a lot of tasks that would naturally fall on the CEO. And by picking them up, it makes more space for the CEO to focus on the expansion and focus on outward things or focus on the bigger topics that need more of, in this case, his attention and and kind of make room for that and more piece of peace of mind as well. By being really strong operationally, and I think that's one of the core things you need as a chief of staff, You also alleviate not only by picking up those things, but by tracking them and making sure that they never have to think about this again. They know that it's in good hands and it's gonna be done, executed fast and and well.