Today I’m talking to Dylan Fox, founder and CEO of AssemblyAI (https://www.assemblyai.com).
Dylan 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
Y Combinator.
On 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.
We get into:
- Five years from founding to a Series A, in a voice AI market he says has since grown 10x
- Why AssemblyAI went 100% usage-based with no committed contracts, and how that produced around 180% net dollar retention
- The Amazon Echo commercial that pulled him into voice while he was at Cisco
- Applying to YC a month late with no co-founder, and how partner Daniel Gross vouched for him
- Scaling headcount before the business was ready, and the go-to-market reset that left AssemblyAI at 85 to 90 people
and so much more!
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
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00:00) Trailer
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01:16) Dylan Fox, Founder & CEO, AssemblyAI
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01:46) YC's first AI batch and five years to a Series A
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05:49) Granola, Tolan and the voice agents built on AssemblyAI
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07:27) Why the last 10% of an AI product creates product market fit
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09:43) 180% net dollar retention with zero committed contracts
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14:04) Field sales techs earning $20K more commission with voice AI
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17:47) Voice as the primary interface to all hardware and software
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24:42) Teaching himself to code to build a DoorDash for toiletries
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29:17) Rejected by Twilio, hired by Cisco
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33:07) The Amazon Echo that started AssemblyAI
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40:56) Applying to YC a month late with no co-founder
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45:01) How Daniel Gross got him into YC
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1:01:30) Scaling up too early and resetting go-to-market
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1:07:21) Leaning on Accel, Insight and founders from Synthesia and Pinecone
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1:14:19) Why he quit X
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1:15:10) Outro
Follow Dylan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanbfox/
X: https://x.com/YouveGotFox
Website: https://www.assemblyai.com
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X: https://x.com/LubaYudasina