{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Luba Show","title":"He Raised $130M For Voice AI Back When The Market Didn't Exist","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4534,"description":"Today I’m talking to Dylan Fox, founder and CEO of AssemblyAI (https://www.assemblyai.com). \nDylan taught himself to code, was a machine learning engineer at Cisco, and went through Y Combinator's very first AI batch in 2017, and now AssemblyAI serves over a million developers and 100 million API calls a day with $130M raised from Accel, Insight and \nY Combinator. \nOn October 27, AssemblyAI launches AssemblyAI-TTS-1, a text-to-speech model built for voice agents that completes its voice stack alongside streaming speech-to-text and turn detection. He gets into the five years he waited for a Series A, and why he thinks the last 10% of an AI product is where product market fit gets decided.\nWe get into:\n- Five years from founding to a Series A, in a voice AI market he says has since grown 10x\n- Why AssemblyAI went 100% usage-based with no committed contracts, and how that produced around 180% net dollar retention\n- The Amazon Echo commercial that pulled him into voice while he      was at Cisco\n- Applying to YC a month late with no co-founder, and how partner Daniel Gross vouched for him\n- Scaling headcount before the business was ready, and the go-to-market reset that left AssemblyAI at 85 to 90 people\nand so much more!\n𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒\n(00:00) Trailer\n(01:16) Dylan Fox, Founder & CEO, AssemblyAI\n(01:46) YC's first AI batch and five years to a Series A\n(05:49) Granola, Tolan and the voice agents built on AssemblyAI\n(07:27) Why the last 10% of an AI product creates product market fit\n(09:43) 180% net dollar retention with zero committed contracts\n(14:04) Field sales techs earning $20K more commission with voice AI\n(17:47) Voice as the primary interface to all hardware and software\n(24:42) Teaching himself to code to build a DoorDash for toiletries\n(29:17) Rejected by Twilio, hired by Cisco\n(33:07) The Amazon Echo that started AssemblyAI\n(40:56) Applying to YC a month late with no co-founder\n(45:01) How Daniel Gross got him into YC\n(1:01:30) Scaling up too early and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/YqzaHw3n0IkFjbaJ3P1-kJdgx8xK8KM9hpwhFomu37c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yNTdk/NDE1ZWFmMmZiMGJk/YWZmODg0ZDZmMDYy/M2Q1Mi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}