Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
00:34:04 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:34:04] S2: I think the the... 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 the public that AI can now be almost anywhere and to have a critical eye when being confronted with 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 it'll be like, no, things are photoshopped. And I think the next shift of seeing or hearing content should be 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 part of developing the tech. And I think every AI company that is innovating at the moment has an ethical responsibility to develop safeguards. [00:35:22] S1: Is that around like watermarks, like the kind of watermarks?
00:35:22 · Cameron Herold, Victoria Weller
[00:35:22] S1: Is that around like watermarks, like the kind of watermarks? [00:35:26] S2: 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 got 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 100% certainty whether it was created with ElevenLabs or not. And that's a really handy tool to have for certainty around audio content. [00:36:21] S1: Is there a 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 a demo via Zoom to our team of of [00:36:42] S2: Yeah. [00:36:42] S1: Of, you know, three to five b to c, a few b to b, etcetera use cases? [00:36:48] S2: Yeah, for sure. I think I wouldn't even be able able to do that. [00:36:53] S1: That would be amazing. [00:36:54] S2: Put you in touch with someone from the revenue team that is closer to the enterprise customers.
00:36:54 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:36:54] S2: Put you in touch with someone from the revenue team that is closer to the enterprise customers. [00:36:59] S1: Maybe we'll have you both show up and maybe you can do a Q and A on the on the CEO 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 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? [00:37:31] S2: Not at the moment. So in a way, yes. Like 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 and you get back the audio and it could be read out loud 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. [00:38:15] S1: 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?
00:38:15 · Cameron Herold, Victoria Weller
[00:38:15] S1: 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? [00:38:25] S2: I'm actually not sure either. [00:38:28] S1: It's like multi something or [00:38:30] S2: Multimodal? Multimodal. [00:38:32] S1: Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's what's really exciting is that I... Like, you... 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, I 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. [00:38:57] S2: You... You've experienced some cool gadgets, AR gadgets. [00:39:01] S1: 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.
00:39:20 · Victoria Weller
[00:39:20] S2: Yeah. I think that the Chief of Staff title, at least in the sense that I've experienced it and now that is at ElevenLabs, is that I get to fill all the gaps that exist at a small company where 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 SOC two compliance, but that's like one example of the gaps. The next one was hiring. There are a bunch of internal operations, even taxes, entity set up, all these different things that it takes 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 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 kind of make room for that and more peace 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 going to be done, executed fast and well.
00:41:21 · Cameron Herold
[00:41:21] S1: So I think to be a really good chief of staff, you have to be very entrepreneurial, like kind of problem solve, think on your feet, because nobody has the system for you. You need to be very good at project management, very good at time management, probably a quick start that you say yes, and I'll figure it out as we go. Do you end up putting yourself out of a job over the next few years? Because as you said that it almost seems like it's kind of like a jack of all trades, master of none, that you're just freaking good at everything, but sooner or later, you're going to have an expert running each domain area. Do you then migrate into a COO's kind of role where you're leading all those people, which you already are doing? Because you said something that was really intriguing, which was it almost seems like a chief of staff is an early stage company role. And then as you get to a mid sized enterprise level, that role doesn't exist anymore because now you have functional heads. Is that accurate?