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00:49:38 · Jack McDermott
[00:49:38] S1: I think there's a few things that come to mind. One is I think that we have continued to increase speed over time. Right? And so we have continued to focus on voice, speech, and audio being our our expertise and have continued... I continued to double down there. And so there's lots of great models in video and image and, yeah, you know, of course, in text. Right? But but we we have continued to double down each turn to be able to to move fast and keep our edge and stay ahead when it comes to voice. I think that we're all aware though that that, you know, to to continue to add and gain value, you you need to do more than just one thing. And so I think that's part of why we... We've tried to build... Take our voice agents platform as a good example. Right? It... It's not just pick your voice and and talk. We we've built in custom evals and workflows and integrations that allow you to begin to concentrate a lot of your your work around that that specific voice experience. I think the same holds true a little bit of of what we're doing with the apps. Right? Like, if you get greater lock in and greater relationship when it comes to the brand that you have, if you've got a creator suite that extends to the mobile, if you've got a set of enterprises that that build a great text content that can then reach consumers. Part of the approach is that you gotta begin to build a bit of an ecosystem and have a lot of interlocking parts if you wanna be able to continue to advance. Again, like, one of the many ways I've been wrong in the last two years, I think a lot of people have, was that, like, I think I would have guessed, like, oh, you'll
00:51:20 · Jacob Eiting
[00:51:20] S3: just be the best voice model. And, like, that will be your edge. But like, you can kinda extrapolate far enough that, you know, Amazon. Yeah. I think of Amazon is like the sort of like Costco of like computer services. Like, at some point, they will have. Like, Amazon Web Services will have a a model that's probably pretty good. Maybe not as good as like the very, like, top edge whatever, but it's probably good enough. And so you might lose that edge. And then it feels like, at least from where I'm standing two years into this, like, crazy hype cycle, it does feel like what you're saying. It's like the the advantages accrue into the application layer. Right? It's like, what and how? And that's where Amazon Web Services is never gonna be able to clone a voice model. You know, they may be able to clone a passable voice model, but they're not gonna have all the little like, all the little application layer tricks. And, you know, was saying before the, you know, call, I played with the the audiobook stuff last year, and you were saying that there there might be, you know, more to that coming. Like, who's gonna build like a a plat... The best platform for using a voice model to do audiobook, like, generation. Right? Who's gonna do that? Maybe some people, but now you've compounded an edge that that that that honestly, it's like stuff that can be like tokens in tokens out gradient descent and like can can be taught that way is gonna become commoditized. The stuff that's not is like interacting with the people actually using these tools, understanding their human needs. I don't know. I don't know how you guys do. I'm constantly going back between like my job is over forever and like humans will actually be the dominant like software creators. Like I still don't know. Every day I go back and forth. But that's kind of... I mean, following what what you were just saying, Jack, like that that kind of promotes a like human centric version of the future of software development, which is like talking to the people and figuring out how the models actually fit into their needs might become the edge. Models. Right? Like everybody will have the... And then that's on the building side too, cogeneration and all those things.
00:53:08 · David Barnard, Jacob Eiting, Jack McDermott, Tanmay Jain
[00:53:08] S0: And also the brand side. I mean, the fact that Jacob and I both recognize ElevenLabs as being like the best voices in the industry by far. [00:53:16] S3: Certainly, I'm not gonna go to AWS first. [00:53:18] S1: You know I mean? [00:53:18] S3: Like like, I've heard of the good one. I'm gonna try the good one, and then maybe we'll look at the cost or whatever. But, like, yeah, certainly, like, that that certainly is gonna give you some sort of advantage as long as it's Yeah. [00:53:28] S2: I mean, it goes back. Like, just just animator is compounding. Right? Right. Every time someone thinks about voice or speech and audio, ElevenLabs is the name that floats to mind immediately. Right? And sure, the the model providers will go and make their best effort to release something, but our mix of focus of relentlessly beating the drum and launching often and, you know, pushing the edges faster than anyone else in the market and compounding that on the earned media and compounding that with, like, you know, a smart growth model that really enables that and really empower engineering teams. All of that just stacks up so that you have this moat. And I I don't know what you call that moat. Maybe it's old school. We call that brand or... You know? [00:54:09] S3: Brand almost seems too simplistic. You know what I mean, in 2026. Yeah.
00:54:09 · Jacob Eiting, David Barnard
[00:54:09] S3: Brand almost seems too simplistic. You know what I mean, in 2026. Yeah. [00:54:13] S0: Well, I I think that's a great place to wrap up. Well, I've got three questions that I've been asking every guest now, and either both of you can answer each one or one of you can take it. But what's the most impactful experiment or change you've implemented this year? What's the biggest win you've seen this year that you think people could take a lesson from?
00:54:30 · Jack McDermott
[00:54:30] S1: I think the biggest, win that that we've had, on the app that that I lead is is really to not lose sight of the fact that, yes, AI is everywhere. And if you you spend time like us trying to evaluate benchmarks and per credit spend and, like, in tokens and and all of the... These things. When when you go to meet a consumer who's trying to think about, hey, I wanna consume a certain amount of content and audio, they're often not gonna start from the point of tokens and credits and that type of thing. So the biggest one is just being able to convey or being able to communicate in simple pricing plans and simple storylines that kind of begin to abstract away from the AI complexity, which is real. Unlike in the past with some SaaS apps, There's real cogs. There there's real cost that you need to be smart about. But that shouldn't mean that that you communicate that way out to a consumer. The biggest win that we had on our side was just we stripped out an entire pricing tier. We switched over to be able to communicate with the amount of hours that you spend to be able to play great content, and beginning to abstract away from a lot of the fine tuned details that go into an AI model, I think has just been the biggest one on our end.
00:55:46 · Tanmay Jain
[00:55:46] S2: I think for us, it's just been simplicity as well, like a version of simplicity. And that's been... That's come up in a few different ways. Working on the app that I do, we try and bring over the best of web to the mobile app. And so so often we talk about distilling it down and not just porting the whole thing over and squishing it down in... Into a mobile form factor. I think it kinda reminds me of the old days where everyone had these supplementary apps that were either really, really, like, bare bones, or they were just basically the desktop dashboard squished into, like, a tiny form factor. And we we think about how can we make it, like, super simple and pick the best of what is working on web, what's really resonating with the audience and bringing that down. And then that went through as well with our pricing, you know, the way we offer, I think, upwards of five plans. And on mobile, it just didn't make sense, you know, for a variety of reasons across Apple and Placer limitations. But even just as a mobile app, we want it to be very simple in the different pricing structures we offer. And so we offer one price. You know, we we test with that, and we test with different, you know, incentives around it. But it keeps us it keeps things very simple, and it means as well that we hold ourselves very accountable when we pick the next thing to work on.