Web Summit 2024 | Day Three

Summary

Day three of Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon was packed with insightful discussions and exciting innovation showcases. Key speakers and startups shared their visions for the future of technology, addressing challenges and solutions across various industries. Highlights included deep dives into AI's role in music and visual storytelling, a riveting pitch competition, and a closing keynote from Portuguese soccer star Ruben Dias which underscored the event's dynamic atmosphere.

Highlights

• AI-powered music creation explored by legendary musician Imogen Heap and Shara Senderoff 🎵
• Synthesia's Brewster showcased the transformative power of AI in video communication 🎥
• Ruben Dias delivered an inspiring keynote on leadership and resilience ⚽️
• Intuitivo won the pitch competition with its innovative digital assessment platform for teachers 🎉
• Vinted shared insights on successfully scaling a fashion resale marketplace in Europe 👗

Key Takeaways

• AI continues to revolutionize creative industries, offering new tools for artists while emphasizing ethical practices.
• The successful application of AI in video poses new opportunities for businesses in communication and marketing.
• Leadership involves leveraging influence for good, as exemplified by Ruben Dias' advocacy against bullying.
• Scalable, tech-driven solutions can enhance productivity and efficiency in traditional sectors like education and fashion.

Overview

Day three at Web Summit 2024 opened with bustling anticipation in Lisbon, hosting myriad discussions and illuminating tech solutions. The event highlighted how innovation addresses current global challenges while creating new paradigms for the future.

A centerpiece was the pitch competition finale, spotlighting pioneering startups. Intuitivo emerged victorious with a platform simplifying teachers' workload. This session encapsulated the merit of innovation in educational productivity.

Culminating the day, soccer star Ruben Dias captivated the audience with insights into leadership and personal growth. His speech underscored the multi-dimensional role of technology and human resilience in driving positive societal change.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 35:00: Introductory Music [Music]
• 35:00 - 40:00: Welcome and Introduction The chapter titled 'Welcome and Introduction' opens with music, setting the tone for the forthcoming content.
• 40:00 - 55:00: Keynote - Web Summit Day 3 Overview The chapter titled 'Keynote - Web Summit Day 3 Overview' begins with applause and background music, setting the tone for an energetic kickoff to the day. This chapter is expected to cover the highlights and key discussions of the third day of the Web Summit, which likely involves various technology leaders and innovators sharing insights on current and future trends in the tech industry.
• 55:00 - 110:00: Electrifying Transportation Panel Discussion The chapter titled 'Electrifying Transportation Panel Discussion' begins with applause and music, setting an enthusiastic and engaging tone for the session. The content of the chapter seems focused on a panel discussion about the electrification of transportation, although the specific details of the discussion are not provided in the transcript summary.
• 110:00 - 160:00: Media Consumption Discussion with Media Leaders In this chapter titled 'Media Consumption Discussion with Media Leaders', the dialogue focuses on how media leaders perceive the current trends and shifts in media consumption. The conversation highlights various perspectives from leaders in the media industry, addressing emerging challenges and opportunities brought about by technological advancements. Key topics include digital transformation, audience engagement strategies, and the evolving landscape of content delivery. Additionally, they discuss predictions for future media consumption behaviors and the implications for traditional media outlets. The chapter serves as an insightful analysis of the media industry's adaptation to contemporary consumption patterns.
• 160:00 - 210:00: Brand Purpose and Identity Panel Discussion The chapter begins with an introduction to a panel discussion focused on brand purpose and identity. It highlights key themes and objectives of the discussion, including the importance of aligning brand goals with consumer values and the distinct identity a brand creates in the marketplace.
• 210:00 - 250:00: AI and Wearable Technology Keynote The chapter begins with a musical introduction, setting an engaging tone for the discussion.
• 250:00 - 310:00: Venture Capital and AI Investment Panel Discussion The chapter begins with music, indicating the start of the event.
• 310:00 - 375:00: Web Summit Qatar Highlights The chapter titled 'Web Summit Qatar Highlights' includes a segment with music playing, but lacks further content or descriptions in the provided transcript. It seems to be geared toward setting the mood or theme for the chapter or providing a transition to or from other segments.
• 375:00 - 460:00: Content Creation and Viral Fame Panel Discussion The chapter 'Content Creation and Viral Fame Panel Discussion' includes a detailed dialogue among industry professionals about the dynamics of content creation in the digital age. This section focuses on the influences and strategies that can lead to virality in various content platforms. Key topics discussed include understanding audience engagement, leveraging trends, the impact of social media algorithms, and the personal branding necessary for gaining and maintaining viral fame. Expect insights and anecdotes from experienced content creators who have experienced both the heights and challenges of achieving and sustaining viral success. Additionally, the panelists stress the importance of authenticity, adaptation to audience feedback, and the continuous evolution required to maintain relevance in a fast-paced digital world. The discussion is complemented by interactive questions from the audience, offering diverse perspectives on the future of content creation. Overall, this chapter provides valuable takeaways on the intricate balance between creativity and strategy in the pursuit of virality. The conversation is lively and punctuated by moments of humor and reflection, making it a must-read for aspiring content creators. [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music]
• 460:00 - 520:00: Delivering the Perfect Pitch Workshop The chapter titled 'Delivering the Perfect Pitch Workshop' seems to introduce the session with music, suggesting a welcoming or atmospheric opening. However, there is no detailed information about the actual content or key points of the workshop from the provided transcript. To generate a comprehensive summary, more details or the main body of the transcript would be needed.
• 520:00 - 580:00: Pitch Finals - Introduction and Pitches The chapter titled 'Pitch Finals - Introduction and Pitches' includes an introduction and various pitches presented by individuals or groups. It begins with a musical introduction, setting the stage for the pitches that follow.
• 580:00 - 1120:00: Break / Interlude This chapter, titled 'Break / Interlude,' appears to involve a pause or transition within the content, possibly involving music. The specific activities or discussions during this interlude are not provided, but it likely serves as a momentary break in the narrative, providing the audience with a chance to reflect or relax before continuing with the main content.
• 1120:00 - 1130:00: Afternoon Session Introduction The chapter titled 'Afternoon Session Introduction' begins with music, setting the tone for the upcoming session.
• 1130:00 - 1200:00: Minister of Portugal Speech on Innovation and Technology The chapter begins with a musical introduction, setting the ambience for the Minister of Portugal's speech.
• 1200:00 - 1260:00: AI and Creativity Discussion with Imogen Heap The chapter is titled 'AI and Creativity Discussion with Imogen Heap'. It primarily features a transcript filled with applause and music, suggesting that perhaps it's more of a performance or discussion intertwined with music, rather than a straightforward dialogue or lecture format. Given the lack of textual information, it's difficult to summarize the precise content of the dialogue that might have occurred. The emphasis on music could suggest a focus on the artistic and performance aspects of AI in creativity, particularly relevant given Imogen Heap's background in music and technology.
• 1260:00 - 1340:00: Toptal Founder Interview on Legal Battles and Business Growth The chapter discusses an interview with the founder of Toptal, focusing on the company's legal battles and business growth. The interview highlights the challenges faced by the company in the legal domain and how it has managed to navigate these issues. Moreover, it touches upon the strategies employed by Toptal for scaling and expanding their business effectively. The conversation provides insights into the founder's perspective on overcoming obstacles and achieving success in the competitive tech industry.
• 1340:00 - 1370:00: Pitch Competition Winner Announcement The chapter opens with anticipation as the audience and participants of the pitch competition await the announcement of the winner. The tension in the room is palpable as the host takes the stage to address the crowd.
• 1370:00 - 1403:20: Web Summit Rio Highlights The chapter titled "Web Summit Rio Highlights" likely covers significant events, key discussions, and main points from the Web Summit held in Rio. It may include insights from various speakers, highlights of emerging tech trends discussed at the conference, and noteworthy announcements or collaborations unveiled during the summit. Due to the lack of specifics in the transcript, further details would rely on the comprehensive content of the chapter itself.
• 1403:20 - 1500:00: AI in Video and Future of Communication Keynote The chapter titled 'AI in Video and Future of Communication Keynote' begins with a musical introduction.
• 1500:00 - 1570:00: Secondhand Market and Vinted's Growth Discussion In this chapter, the focus is on the discussion of the secondhand market and the growth of Vinted, a popular platform for buying and selling secondhand items.
• 1570:00 - 1630:00: Closing Keynote with Portuguese Footballer Ruben Dias The chapter titled "Closing Keynote with Portuguese Footballer Ruben Dias" seems to involve some segments of speech. However, the provided transcript text "he he" is minimal and lacks substantial content to create a meaningful summary about the keynote speech or its main points. It may suggest the presence of an audio or video file that wasn't transcribed entirely or correctly. Additional information or a complete transcript would be necessary for a more detailed and informative summary.
• 1630:00 - 1670:00: Closing Ceremony and Farewell Chapter 6: Closing Ceremony and Farewell - The chapter captures the emotional and celebratory moments of a closing event, characterized by applause, music, and the overall festive atmosphere.

Web Summit 2024 | Day Three Transcription

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• 20:30 - 21:00 please welcome to the stage the co-host of websummit Vancouver web summit's very own KC [Music] Lao all right good morning bomb D Good Morgan Bono and buis Diaz I can't believe it we are already here on the
• 21:00 - 21:30 third and final day at websummit 2024 I know my name is Casey Lao and by now you've heard how excited I am to be hosting the very first web Summit in North America in my hometown of Vancouver Canada in May 2025 but I hope you've had an amazing week here in Lisbon had more than a few pastel dadas I discovered my new favorite drink to this trip it's called the Porto Tonica and that you've all enjoyed the amazing Portuguese Hospitality as you explored
• 21:30 - 22:00 the night Summit events enjoyed the food and the catering here at the venue and I want to give out a shout out to all the Uber drivers who've been super amazing uh but maybe not the Metro workers who love to strike when we were in town but definitely everyone else in Lisbon we love you very much and are very happy for you to be our host City this year's web Summit Lisbon has been our biggest year yet and it's been great to see founder Patty CG grave back in the CEO chair and I'm so happy to see
• 22:00 - 22:30 that Europe is still working for a better and brighter future with technology and Humanity working together I hope you'll join us in Qatar Rio and Vancouver next year before being back here in Lisbon next November all right this morning on Center Stage here at the 12,000 seat meal ARA Arena we have speakers from Big Silicon Valley VCS like costal adventures and 776 creatives like imagin Heap and Lauren Gray on how they work with AI
• 22:30 - 23:00 local footballing Superstar Ruben Diaz will be here not to mention the pitch finals where we'll find out who will be Crown the best startup of websummit 2024 I'm excited I hope you the live audience are excited yeah okay great thank you and all of you out there right now on social media watching the live stream are even more excited so let's get going with the first talk of day three here at
• 23:00 - 23:30 websummit 2024 the way we travel is changing all the time no longer is car ownership the only way to go there's been a surge of electrical vehicle sales in recent years but this has Pro provided challenges of its own for power grids to find out how the industry is changing what that means for our environment and what is next for mobility in conversation with Amy nordrum from MIT technology review please welcome the co-founders and CEOs
• 23:30 - 24:00 of sender and Electra David noaker and aelan [Music] Deo hello everyone thank you for being here this morning to to talk with us about electrifying
• 24:00 - 24:30 Transportation you know often when we talk about this topic we talk about electrifying the way that you and I travel around whether that's flights or our personal vehicles but today we're going to talk a bit more about shipping and the way that we move all the stuff that we buy around the world because that's its own special challenge so David let's begin with you start by making the case for us why electrification why is that the right approach here why not one of the Alternatives like biofuel or hydrogen or
• 24:30 - 25:00 lower emissions forms of hydrocarbon fuels it's a very good question the future of Mobility is green I think that's for me very clear the different options to get there um bofus is one I think probably the most used at least in transportation um the industry I come from then there is uh hydrogen which is a bit further down the road and then there's electrification and I think if I look at what has happened over the past few years there was a lot of policy making pushing electrification and also
• 25:00 - 25:30 a lot of investments in that space and that's why we also at sander um focus on offering Greener solution and have a very strong proposition already around electric trucks even though there's and I think we're going to talk about it a lot of challenges that still have to be solved to really scale this solution there certainly are and aelian you know about them uh well you are building out this fast charging Network across Europe with your company and range anxiety is still a big barrier
• 25:30 - 26:00 to EV adoption so my question for you is how many Chargers do we need to build still to do away with range anxiety once and for all and what will it take to get there yeah so just before I answer your question I think just allow me to say that electrification I think is a fantastic change for Europe because today all of our transportation it cars trucks planes boats buses they all go on petrol and as a matter of fact in Europe in the European Union we import 99% of
• 26:00 - 26:30 our oil we don't have oil so there's the climate positive which is for sure but there's also a big sovereignty issue we make all of of our electricity now to your question I think there's more than enough chargers at the moment in Europe uh because what we have seen is that in the last two years there's been a boom in infrastructure with loads of charging stations Electro we are investing and a half billion EUR but there's plenty of other players who
• 26:30 - 27:00 are also building infrastructure and on the other hand the sales of battery electric cars have not gone up as much as we expected so it's not going to be a straight line I think next year they're going to pick up again but um still uh it means that there is more than enough charges for the number of cars that are on the road today and last but not least a charger can be very different a charger can charge a car in 20 minutes
• 27:00 - 27:30 what we call a supercharger or it can charge a car in 20 hours so I think the the reasoning here is to think okay uh let's focus on quality infrastructure when it comes to public uh uh public infrastructure people will want to get fast charging and now we have the technology to make it happen that makes sense David you work with carriers and shippers of all different sizes what are some of the factors that they're considering today as they think about whether to purchase their first electric truck or switch
• 27:30 - 28:00 their entire fleet over to electric trucks so when we look at the carrier side there's a few things that are quite interesting the first fact I want to share is that 70% of all trucks that you see on European roads are owned by family-owned businesses with fewer than 10 trucks it's a highly fragmented um industry now if you know that electric trucks cost three to four times more than diesel trucks and we're talking about four 500,000 yeah you ask yourself why would a
• 28:00 - 28:30 family-owned trucking company with three trucks buy a fourth one that cost more than entire fleet without knowing this residual value how much they can sell it for the true operating cost of this new technology and whether anyone pays a premium for this additional risk and cost that comes in and this is why we see that when it comes to battery electric trucks the adoption side has been very tricky um especially on this very fragmented
• 28:30 - 29:00 base and that's why uh we we came up with with one solution um that we are developing together with Scana one of the leading truck manufacturer in Europe especially when it comes to um electric trucks and here we offer a payper use model so trucking companies don't have to finance or pay 400,000 up front they pay per kilometer and within that they have insurance maintenance everything except for electric uh the
• 29:00 - 29:30 the electricity maybe we should talk um so they deris the adoption they don't have to take the risk they only pay per kilometer when they drive and then we as sender have a second contractual relationship with these small family on trucking companies and offer them loads to guarantee utilization so that as a small carrier I only pay when I drive and when I drive I have a guaranteed load coming from sender this is something that we are now scaling but it's still on Regional level
• 29:30 - 30:00 so we do shuttles to warehouses or production facility where Warehouse where there's constant flows and now next year it's all about scaling that by leveraging infrastructure and I would like to conclude by saying that at least for electric trucks I feel like there's still some opportunity for us to have more infrastructure at least access to the infrastructure because as you said not every charging station fits all use cases and especially when you have a big truck that needs to park and needs fast charging there's still a lot I think
• 30:00 - 30:30 that uh we need to really scale um the solutions that we're testing yeah David say more about that how are the needs and challenges of trucks different than personal vehicles like cars and SUVs when it comes to electrification so first of all it's the cost of the vehicle it's significantly higher because 90% of the cost of an electric truck is the battery and then there's a lot of other let's say major question and risks Associated uh with
• 30:30 - 31:00 that it's a for business um um decision so it's it's really you need to make money if you decide to go that path and there's still too many question marks for a lot to take that risk and really um invest in that just to give you one example there's some parallels to also passenger casts but if you sell today a truck big typically big Fleet owners buy new trucks they sell it then to smaller companies 3 4 years later just like car rental model and then you sell them
• 31:00 - 31:30 maybe to Eastern Europe and then to I don't know some other countries outside of Europe but with electric trucks lack of infrastructure all of that goes also lost and then that's why when it comes to taking these decisions to invest in electrification in trucking there's still a few more challenges than on the passenger card there are also many different charging standards out there aelan so what and that can contribute to this lack of confidence that a a driver has
• 31:30 - 32:00 and being able to find the the charger that they need um what do you think is the solution to that problem yeah so the the the good news is that the um the European Union has harmonized the connector for all cars so the plug basically is the same it's called the ccs to fast charge or type two for slow charge so I think we need we need to stress it also when the European Union does good things such as like the USBC connector the plug forecasts is is the same that's the first
• 32:00 - 32:30 thing yeah and and and the second thing is that um as an operator we have byw to accept any EV pass out there on the market meaning that whatever the pass that you have you can charge on all the infrastructure so I think basically in the last two to three years there's been a spike in infrastructure the battery technologies have evolved a lot you can charge much faster the cars are much
• 32:30 - 33:00 better but what we need now to have is a positive narrative around electric cars we need to show that it's just simply a better product and a better experience and this is why people will adopt electric cars not not just because it's a policy uh that has been uh designed in in in Brussels I can tell you this Christmas Around the Corner there'll be a lot of debates in all families and electric cars is going to
• 33:00 - 33:30 be a topic and there'll be anti-electric cars Pro electric cars and and there's a lot of debate and I think it just shouldn't be a political thing it should be an obvious consumer Choice well speaking of the EU they have effectively banned the sale of gas and diesel engines beginning in 2035 in new cars but the CEO of BMW recently said he doesn't think that that's going to be possible for Europe to achieve and Volvo has recently rolled back its plans to
• 33:30 - 34:00 sell only electric vehicles from 2030 on so either of you what do you think of this law is it still feasible is that still a reasonable goal for Europe and are we on track for that it's absolutely feasible and and more than that we need stability the oems the car manufacturers have invested billions in the uh battery value chain in their production chain and they need stability and by the way they asked for it so no OEM is asking
• 34:00 - 34:30 for revising the track towards electrification and the law is 2035 and most oems are going to have either 100% of their cars electric or 70 or 80% of their C Electric in 2030 so 5 years before 2035 so I I I really think they will be ready of course there are some bumps on the road it's a major transition so it's not not going to be a straight line and there are some ups and downs but I think
• 34:30 - 35:00 they will definitely be ready thank you can I add that because I agree with the first part of the statement it is feasible my personal perception is that it might take a bit longer I was here a couple of years ago and thought it would definitely be feasible but when I look at the challenges that we have and also the lack of the support especially when it comes to subsidies and I get your point around it it has to be in inic it does not have to be pushed and regulated
• 35:00 - 35:30 but compared to two years ago where we still had much more subsidies for the purchase also of vehicles the timeline for me has shifted and when I speak to the big truck manufacturers and Volvo also publicly announced that they're seeing a shift back in that timeline so it will happen I just think it will take a bit longer than what we thought when the regulation was put in place in Europe and what we I personally thought two years ago yeah I I think that truck indeed is a bit of a
• 35:30 - 36:00 different timeline than lightweight Vehicles sure that's fair yeah David I'm curious what kinds of technical advances are you most looking forward to for trucks in particular like would it be better batteries to extend the range or more automation to help them run more efficiently like what's on your wish list there well both of those um especially range we're still talking about 300 kilometers and we need at least 450 plus a fast charging so that we really can
• 36:00 - 36:30 scale electric truck for long distance um use so that's definitely one but when I look at the future of the trucking industry I think that the big technology that will again change a lot of things is autonomous and coming back to you know timeline two years ago when I was here last I thought electric would come quicker and autonomous would take a long time it's still going to take at least 10 years but I feel like yeah that
• 36:30 - 37:00 technology which will be most likely powered also by Electric uh engines um is going to be much closer because of a number of other dynamics that that I see happening the technology is there um there are few pain points that are growing and let's see when policy makers will get to the point where they have to act and then that's a technology that I think based on electrification will again shift fundamentally how a lot of things are working including the
• 37:00 - 37:30 logistics and tracking industry ah so your views on that have reversed essentially interesting and aurelan if we achieve this goal in 2035 of switching to all electric for new car sales is the grid ready for that can it support that can it provide renewable electricity to all the cars and hopefully trucks that are on the roads by then or what what else do we need to do to make that possible yeah I mean you're right the the grid needs to keep investing a lot um particularly because
• 37:30 - 38:00 in the global electrification you have several things you have Renewables you have electric cars you have data centers and we know with AI it's going to be very consuming we have battery storage to balance the grid so this plenty of electrification the energy Supply and energy generation is strong in Europe what we need is more investment in the grid to to keep the electrons moving and um but on the other hand I think when you
• 38:00 - 38:30 look at the numbers because most cars charge at night they are not affecting the the grid so much because the grid is in pain basically in the morning and in the evening during the so-called peak hours and electric cars can also be an advantage because we see more and more technology which is what we call the v2g vehicle to grid so that the battery of the car can actually inject some electricity within the grid so they can can can be an interesting asset to balance the grid
• 38:30 - 39:00 um so yeah lot of investment in the grid but I think we are more than ready excellent uh question for each of you what are you seeing outside of Europe that you're interested in or excited about where are you seeing the most progress or what are you watching for um China China China so uh I was in China a month and a half ago and you can see that the shift that they have they are um making is huge like then the
• 39:00 - 39:30 number one producer of solar panels they're the number one producer of uh wind turbines they're the number one producer of electric cars batteries battery storage so I think we look at China as a fierce opponent sometimes an enemy but I think they shouldn't prevent us from looking at China with all the positive that they're doing shifting their whole
• 39:30 - 40:00 economy from coal basically and gas to electrification and they're very advanced in electrification and also on autonomous driving as as you were mentioning and this is where I fully agree with you and I would like to add one more thing I think that Europe and European companies have realized in the last few months what you just said more than before before was like out there maybe happening but I think the gap that you just described is very very present more than ever I think
• 40:00 - 40:30 some of you followed Volkswagen news and that you know fundamentally changing a couple of things and also in the trucking industry everyone now understands that in 10 years or make it 20 years just producing an asset with a battery that makes most of the cost will no longer be sufficient to have a competitive Advantage because most likely Chinese assets will be just more competitive and this leads to very interesting discussion how business model need to evolve and think about a
• 40:30 - 41:00 truck manufacturer they're not going to sell just the asset in 20 years most likely you know we're going to have more competitive just assets out especially if then they can be autonomous I find that very exciting and know it's a bit out there but because big companies need a long time to change and evolve and they got the memo I think especially this year I'm very excited to see how those discussions are evolving the thinking and the things that are put being put in place to test and start evolving into different future into new
• 41:00 - 41:30 business models and and just to add on that I think we need to be also honest about China is taking the lead not just because it's cheap labor or because they subsidize their economy we do subsidize a lot I mean in France or in Europe we we have a lot of subsidies in the US you have the IRA so I think just saying oh they subsidize and they have cheap labor it's just uh the wrong analysis they they have done done some some things
• 41:30 - 42:00 that are very very good and we need to get inspired that's a good note to end on thank you both for painting this picture of the work still to be done and the progress that we've made so far I appreciate your time thank you so much very much thank you [Music]
• 42:00 - 42:30 [Music] all right in a fragmented media environment with endless sources of information to choose from people's news habits have changed dramatically Print TV and radio have not been replaced but
• 42:30 - 43:00 they have had to learn to live with the New Kids on the Block podcasts social media email newsletters I was watching the US election results happen live via an Apple news widget on my iPhone are people returning to old ways are they new are these New Media sources going to continue to capture our attention to discuss this and the future of media consumption in conversation with Sarah Fischer from axios please welcome the
• 43:00 - 43:30 CEO and editor-in-chief of the ankler Jenis Min and the co-founder and CEO of you should care about Lucy Blackiston [Music]
• 43:30 - 44:00 good morning web Summit thank you for joining us today I am so excited for this conversation because I feel like we live it and breathe it every day I am joined By Janice Min famed Hollywood editor who is now the co-founder and CEO of the ankler as well as Lu Lucy Blackiston who is the founder and head of you should care about all the way in from New Zealand Round of Applause for our panelists this morning morning thank you guys so
• 44:00 - 44:30 much so I hail from Washington DC and we've just had an interesting few weeks but one of the things that was notable about it was that this political campaign was dominated by New Media Donald Trump famously did new podcasts over Legacy TV networks they employed strategies on social media that we have not seen before and it really put the mainstream media Legacy newspapers and networks on notice Janice I want your
• 44:30 - 45:00 reflection on this given that you are a new age digital media company in America and while you don't cover politics Hollywood and Washington have always had a strong relationship completely and by the way I mean I I work and cover uh a bubble right Hollywood is one of the cultural bubbles uh in America and people were stunned Blown Away they can't see how this this could happen but I what we've seen it's a reflection of I
• 45:00 - 45:30 think we've seen this across Hollywood we've seen it in media we've certainly now seen it in politics the death of the incumbents that PE that everyone is frustrated with the power structure as it's been and are empowering new entities and new voices um and I also think we're redefining what a journalist even is I mean when you look at the places that Donald Trump and kamla Harris chose to do their interviews it was with uh places they would have never
• 45:30 - 46:00 considered four years ago um and that that to me I mean I think everyone knows journalism is having an existential crisis this week and I as people who have worked at Legacy Media places you know that um a lot of hand ringing goes on at a news organization when something like this happens but Lucy how is it that we were caught off guard because I think about your audience so digitally savvy social media 247 you knew that this was coming because you get that
• 46:00 - 46:30 feedback from all all the time why do you think mainstream Legacy Outlets miss this oh my God if I could answer that question properly I feel like I would be in the highest forms of the UN and the government and everywhere I don't know why it is the way it is I feel like it's really hilarious insane bananas that for example I'm a New Zealander little New Zealander covering the election and like my coverage got like 230 million views
• 46:30 - 47:00 and that's crazy because I don't even live there and I'm I've never worked for a traditional mainstream outlet and so I think I'm part of the solution but I'm also part of the problem of like what is a journalist bro like what are we anymore but then question for you what do you think it is that draw them in was it your authenticity and your voice was it the mediums focusing on social why did people want to come to you I think it's cuz I'm really cute no me come on
• 47:00 - 47:30 no um honestly I have this thing where I say I like to give people the news without giving them the blues and I think especially when it comes to young people not getting depressed by the news cycle is such a win that if I can um if I can give the most terrible news in the world and still make people not hate their lives then I'm doing my job right thank thanks for giving me this I thought I was sounding great you do sound great but then a followup I have
• 47:30 - 48:00 maybe then for Janice I agree the news has been so difficult to digest we're seeing news fatigue but we can't just ignore Wars we can't ignore problems with the economy so how do you strike that balance I I don't think it's that I don't think it's that people should ignore but I think people are ignoring or media is ignoring the issues that voters cared about I mean I think the mistake one of the huge mistakes that every everyone is um Monday morning quarterbacking now is to think that
• 48:00 - 48:30 people were voting based on their demographic they were voting I mean I think you saw countless stories about women are going to vote for Kamala well it turns out not not in the majority they thought or in the numbers they thought they would um Latino people are going to vote this way and that way and so I think that uh Legacy Media a lot of people are frustrated with it this week because it created a narrative that wasn't necessarily factual and uh and you saw I mean it's it's total populism
• 48:30 - 49:00 you see you're going I mean Trump has the he built a coalition of Americans that Democrats never thought could be possible so you don't it's not that you stop covering the serious things obviously those things happen but I think it's sort I mean like all media it's based on audience who is your audience do you know your audience and increasingly it's probably you know places like the New York Times are going to be read consumed by people who went to college people who probably skew left
• 49:00 - 49:30 and then you have this whole world of other media of people who might who have a huge audiences of people who may not have gone to college who may be working class who may be struggling that don't care what the New York Times says so interesting what you said about people not voting on demographic lines anymore because one of the promises Lucy of New Media is that you have better access to data so you should know more about your audience so that you don't have to make assumptions about what they're believing and what they're thinking how do you use
• 49:30 - 50:00 data in your media company social feedback to inform how you're doing coverage I'm like not good at being obsessed with data I feel like I love what is it the psychographics over the I love knowing who they are and a lot of them are kind of reflections of me um which it means I've built a huge eco chamber and I'm very aware of that but I don't like dictating stuff by the numbers because then it's going to tell
• 50:00 - 50:30 me what to report on and I don't think I should be dictated by the things that are going to get the most likes or the most listens um so famously I actually hate using data to inform anything I do it's all Vibes all Vibes but then you're getting those vibes though because you have real-time feedback online like a newspaper does not get realtime feedback in the way that you do so how do you monitor that feedback oh God I stay as far out of my comments sections as I possibly can um no it's really good
• 50:30 - 51:00 because again being from New Zealand I'm at the bottom of the world so many things go on in this godamn world that I wouldn't know about if I didn't have people emailing me dming me commenting all the time sometimes it's not nice sometimes it's like and Lucy why aren't you talking about XY Z and I'm like cuz I'm one person um but a lot of the time if people come with good grace and are like this is happening in my country bro you should report on it um it's kind of my favorite way to learn about what's happening in the world and a privilege
• 51:00 - 51:30 to get to share it I think email you mentioned email being one of your feedback loops is a special medium because it is so easy to reply literally the click of a button you're in someone's inbox Janice the ankler has built its entire business revolved around email newsletters and your your writers are extraordinarily responsive yes and so how do you train that culture of making sure that they continue to be responsive and why did you make your bet on email even though you were a magazine editor for so
• 51:30 - 52:00 many years yes remember those um so I so with this is really the new generation of writers I think one of the one of the things with email and one of the things with quick response time and I'm glad you've noticed that is that they have a direct relationship with the audience it's this whole you know if you want to use jargon this direct to Consumer relationship and if you ever worked in Legacy Media there is a very arms length way you write about things and a AR length the way you talk to you talk to the audience and report on subjects and
• 52:00 - 52:30 I mean even like as someone who's been an editor-in chief for you know at magazines like some of it was that you your role was to be as inaccessible as possible obviously that's all been rejected by the consumer um and advertisers at this point so um email I mean I sort of saw I saw the what was happening scale media was dying people weren't going to websites anyone who's ever worked at a website knows that none of your web traffic comes from direct and email um it it's it's amazing it is
• 52:30 - 53:00 persevered and grown and it's a way to really you know exactly who you're sending to you know exactly what you want to say to them and you have instant feedback about did they like it or not how many people opened it how many times was it shared and so it's a way you're just constantly evolving your audience um in into having a more intimate relationship with your writers but then just something to follow up on that I agree and my company is also email based there are times when you do need to lean into Legacy Media because they have
• 53:00 - 53:30 broad reach I think about the ankler partnering with the LA radio stations why did you choose to do that well okay so this is I mean I think this is one of the things we're going to see coming down the road like it's great to have all these small places it's great that you can find your own Niche everywhere but everyone hits an awareness ceiling right and that was like okay there are a lot of people we partnered with LA's biggest NPR station um a lot of people people don't even know about the ankler so let's get it in front of the audience
• 53:30 - 54:00 and so it I think you're going to see uh increasingly probably a lot of Partnerships maybe small rollups of a lot of these uh Niche titles and you know when I think about Fox news in the US for example and they've been the you know huge Guerilla in the right-wing media space but then all these insurgents that came along that are doing incredibly well including uh Megan Kelly Tucker Carlson with their individual media platforms I imagine some kind of rollup down the road where small places get absorbed by big places
• 54:00 - 54:30 and then new small places will come along and we're already starting to see that right that's kind of almost what substack even is Lucy one of the challenges with building up a strong news business on social media is that the platforms can yank it right out from underneath you at any time I think about in the news industry Facebook investing heavily in the distribution of news pulling back that caused media companies to Crater to close so how do you make sure you're not overly dependent on social
• 54:30 - 55:00 media well it helps when you really like at your core don't love social media which is so hypocritical like these 3 million people that come to me on social media for their news and I'm like no why don't you actually come to my substack instead um I think in 2020 I just saw the worst version of what social media could do to people and to countries and to our souls and so I was like do you know what I don't even own any of this audience why am I giving them everything and they're giving me
• 55:00 - 55:30 nothing and so then I was like yeah an email newsletter feels like it's going to be really cute people go to university and then they go and get their jobs and they the one thing they always have is their email they might delete Instagram delete X on you if you have um but you'll probably always have an email and so not a hot take but it felt like 2020 felt like the time that I would stop giving zacher BG all my energy start giving it to another dude
• 55:30 - 56:00 who owns substack but anyway um I yeah I think just owning your audience is so important and email is like my favorite thing that we do it's the light of my life I'm sure you feel the samee competed to social media an interesting thing though about email so we saw this huge push to newsletters which is Tech Bas and then also during the pandemic as social media became you know a little bit more volatile people really shifted into audio I know you guys do podcasts
• 56:00 - 56:30 how do you make sure that you're able to cater to your audience across all these different mediums when you both have relatively small staffs right what's the strategy Janice well I I mean everybody I you know these these very um layered organizations of old and uh you have to just expect I mean that they were kind of like assembly lines one person does this another person writes the caption another person gets the photos and that's gone right and and
• 56:30 - 57:00 you're seeing uh these Legacy organizations who continue to lay people off um trying to get down to a more efficient sort of uh Staffing level and um but people it's interesting I think it's it's not just age it's a mindset that people have an expectation that they would like to have control over what they say how it appears and and they know their audiences so they know what they want um so I think again that that process of having everything so smoothed out and um
• 57:00 - 57:30 Polished by the time it's presented to the public is at least at this moment not necessarily what people want Lucy I think what Janice is saying is if you're a journalist like you're responsible for doing everything nowadays I know for us we have to do the social media and we have to do podcasts and TV how do you become a jack of all trades without being scared because I think fear has driven a lot of this stagnation you just have to have so much audacity and just really like I think I was 20
• 57:30 - 58:00 when I started you should care about and I don't know why I was like oh I should be the one that's going to make the news make sense for young people duh like it should be me and then you just have to become really obsessed with the thing like I'm a onew woman team I have some people in my life that help me so shout out to y'all but for the most part it's like I was doing two podcasts a week a newsletter every day an insane amount of social media posting and it worked cuz there was no one telling me what to do so we love no friction in you
• 58:00 - 58:30 and what you put out to the world but it also worked because I was just so obsessed with the thing uh it's not good when you want to take a day off being a onew woman team but do you know what I think while I'm not burnt out I can maintain it maybe not healthy don't know so sah I bring up something like I think even if you look at um I'm just going to bring it back to Hollywood a second and and these professionally done Productions if you look at it's kind of Hollywood versus YouTube right and
• 58:30 - 59:00 Hollywood has Gatekeepers and someone has to tell you if your if your movie or television is worthy before they buy it then they're going to executives are going to give you notes and they're going to make it into what they believe the audience wants and this is why so many YouTube creators are just have just passed on Hollywood now that used to be the gold standard of where that was a sign that you finally made it and now so many YouTube creators are like no like you can't you do not know my audience and I and I can actually own my stuff and monetize it on YouTube in a whole
• 59:00 - 59:30 other way but let's take away for a second the creative entertainment side and think just solely about service and news one of the challenges with creating a frictionless environment is you don't have the oversight sometimes necessary and required to stick to facts like how do you think about that balance okay we we stick to facts um so there there's that but I but yes I mean a lot of these news a lot of the places you wrote about this and uh your great column yesterday about how Maga is going to inform the
• 59:30 - 60:00 media moving forward and um that that includes Trump likely inviting into the White House briefing room Outlets that publish that don't believe that the election results in 2020 are real that uh say malicious things about um Haitians eating dogs and cats in Ohio and so that that is problematic and so I believe that there is a layer of gatekeeping that is required and I can only be responsible for my own at the moment um and certainly hope and
• 60:00 - 60:30 you know the public hopefully has a way of um you know voting on media too and deciding what they will support and not the last question I have because we're about to run out of time is about fatigue we've seen especially in the US a ton of news fatigue people are struggling to get through you know coverage of two big Wars a very contentious election hurricanes how you said before Lucy it's about giving people the news and not the blues how do you do that when it really is such an
• 60:30 - 61:00 important news environment still you don't want to skip that stuff God I think putting a swear word in the title of your brand really lets people know that you're going to learn some stuff but it's not going to be really intensive so definitely using the word can be quite jaring um for people but it's helped us be like you know what you're going to get when you come I think also being from New Zealand is a very sarcastic way of presenting things and like quite funny way of
• 61:00 - 61:30 presenting things that cuz 50% of our audience is from the states and I think they must they you they must just feel non- intimidated uh and like they're not going to have to read through a whole lot of huge words like hegemonic discourse to understand the world totally Janice just a few seconds um let's see I think you I think we're wrong to think people are all one thing they want humor they want to laugh they want to know serious topics and we live in a world where you can find that now
• 61:30 - 62:00 and thank God for people like Lucy where you can just have a quick break and still feel informed everyone hits an awareness feeling and that's why Janice is trying to move not just from doing newsletters but exploring old media too Janice I love what you talked about how the Dynamics flipping from Hollywood and YouTube super interesting it's not an age it's a mindset that's what really dictates how people move into multiple mediums um I can't believe 200 30 million views on your New Zealand B blog for the election that's absolutely
• 62:00 - 62:30 unbelievable and congratulation giving people the news and not the blues and then finally you have to have the audacity to do what you do everyone please join me in giving a great Round of Applause to Janice Min and to Lucy of that you can't live without thank you guys [Music] [Applause] [Music]
• 62:30 - 63:00 [Music] okay in today's Global Marketplace it's never been more important for Brands to have a clearly defined purpose and identity coming up next we find out how to tell your story in a way that connects with your audience and allows
• 63:00 - 63:30 you to stand out from the crowd back to moderate for this one is TV host and our very own laa vente she's speaking with the founder and CEO of mg Empower Maria genovis and the co-founder of Vasa Sebastian cop [Music]
• 63:30 - 64:00 good morning everyone it's a pleasure being here in Center Stage representing Brazil with you guys yes how are you very good very exciting okay so to get started I want to ask you what does it mean for a brand to have purpose and why is it essential in today's Global
• 64:00 - 64:30 Marketplace um in my case we are an agency right so is a we service business and uh when I found the business nine years ago for me it was so important to understand why I was moving from being working in a corporate environment to launch my own business so that journey of understanding that was not just the agents to provide service to clients but why I was doing this and the purpose
• 64:30 - 65:00 behind this that could reflect on the service that we offering to our clients but also to our employees so the name itself says M EMP power because the Empower means empowering the clients that we serve but equally empower the people which the people is our employees cuz I feel like when I have the purpose that mg power is about giving back giving back a great Excellence of
• 65:00 - 65:30 service is giving back the results for our clients but also giving back for the people that are actually doing the magic behind the scene and once we get that purpose it's so much easier to wake up in the morning know why you're doing this incredible what about you Sebastian good morning good morning bon bon uh super honored to be here and um yes the question of purpose we never ask ourselves um because maybe um when we
• 65:30 - 66:00 founded V uh with my best friend uh Francois it was in 2004 we were 25 years old and um what we wanted to do is to create a sneaker that would um that would protect the environment and that would Pro uh defend the the people so it was an Utopia it was uh all our friends our parents that were saying you're completely crazy you're you're never going to
• 66:00 - 66:30 succeed and so we never went into ideas we were very much into reality into uh going on the field to deconstruct completely how you make a sneaker and build it up again meaning uh what is a a sneaker it's made with a sole uh what is the sole it's plastic usually with Adidas Nike Etc it's plastic so with what could we replace
• 66:30 - 67:00 plastic and that's why we went in 2004 went in in Amazonia to chase rubber uh from the forest and uh from the people living and protecting the forest and to buy to them directly the rubber we did the same for organic cotton we did the same uh we do the same for uh uh recycled P we work with communities on the field and um maybe from an environmental project vja became more a
• 67:00 - 67:30 social project we are super close super linked uh with the field so the question of purpose is nice but uh for us it's more a day-to-day question of what are you doing what is your own consistency um why uh why are you doing uh what you do every day small more steps you do every day and then if you answer every day you don't have to ask
• 67:30 - 68:00 yourself the question that's a way to uh to answer it absolutely and also a way to break it down into maybe smaller actions right directing it to actions instead of just this big philosophical thing absolutely uh and what take what steps can a company take to Define its purpose I mean one is an example that Sebastian just gave us to br break it down into everyday action exactly uh what would be your tip
• 68:00 - 68:30 towards how to define that unique purpose and identity I think purpose is really connect to values as well right because I think as Sebastian said purpose is something that everyone is trying to find their own purpose every day because things can change but the most important thing at least for me is just like having the vision of the purpose and then adapt the purpose on on the day today but I think the values of
• 68:30 - 69:00 your company is for me is kind of the starting point of understanding your your purpose so the values of Ming power we say is a five E which is Excellence empathy and vision energy and Excellence so when we put it all together then it comes to the purpose of why we're doing this is to empower people and Brands through the values so values is really connected to the purpose and that would be the way I've managed to actually getting my why and the purpose through
• 69:00 - 69:30 the values of the business incredible Sebastian um what would you say the pillars of vision purpose and Mission are who um pillars um it is to um for us it's to create a new breed a new kind of company that is not um completely um passionated with money but um by uh as I said every
• 69:30 - 70:00 step of the way meaning um at the beginning we created a sneaker that respect environment with choosing the materials choosing the factory being sure that uh you know all the sneakers in the world they are made in Asia uh in not so good social conditions uh and it can be very bad um we chose Brazil because it's a country that respect the workers uh they
• 70:00 - 70:30 work 40 hours a week they have a decent wage they can own a house they can own a car uh it's a very difficult work to work in a shoe factory but it's uh they have a decent life which and that's why we chose Brazil also for the raw materials Etc but um pillars I think it's every project we work on the K kadya produa on the supply chain um it's from the forest uh from
• 70:30 - 71:00 the Amazonian Forest to the factory to Transportation how do you transport the shoes to the warehouses where are the stock do you work with Amazon uh or do you work with a a social NGO um that is um working with people that have social difficulties and that's what we chose since the beginning and the project enlarged a lot um you know you take
• 71:00 - 71:30 very cold View at every step of the productive chain and you change every time sometimes you can do small changes sometimes you can do big changes uh it depends on the on what you're talking about but every time we pushing to um for good for example the factories we were working with um they were not working with fair trade um principles and one after another we are convincing them to adapt fair trade uh
• 71:30 - 72:00 to the factories principle so it's big it's a lot of uh social audits Etc it's a lot of uh time and money but on the way we are uh we are we keep changing on the way that's uh that's what is important to us and then also that every uh people at V is happy every people at V can deploy herself or himself is super important so pillars we have so many
• 72:00 - 72:30 that uh we don't have the time we have 9 Minutes uh but I I don't think you can sum up um in three or five things there is everything to change in the in the complicated world uh we're living now so um we don't want to change the world we we want to change ourselves first and maybe to set up an example that people can be inspired or follow or
• 72:30 - 73:00 even take our example and change and do it better that's what we wish uh we don't want a big V we want 1,000 visas amazing and one way to inspire other people to change I think is happening right now on this stage right to spread the word about how we can make that difference happen uh MAA can you share with us examples of brands that you've worked with with strong effective purposes that have successfully connected with their Global
• 73:00 - 73:30 audiences yeah this is a is a one for me and then she was here yesterday liani she's also Brazilian she's the CEO of Bumbo so Bumbo is a dating app and uh the purpose behind Bumble is incredible so whitne she launched and found the app uh with the purpose to change and challenge the way women date and putting women first and uh it's so easy when we work at least listen to
• 73:30 - 74:00 stories of Sebastian and the clients that we serve and Bumbo is been working with us for five years now so one that a brand has a very strong purpose of why they created the dating app and why they think it's important to change the way uh we date and putting women first and Challenge and change this universe it's a uh it makes us more exciting to create marketing strategy and marketing PS that we can spread the messaging of the
• 74:00 - 74:30 purpose of the brand and getting the change to to be done so I think it's a bu is a is a great example it is indeed and um how do you approach the conflict between purpose and profit in everyday decisions at vision for example um I mean you put it that V is not a company about like your main purpose is not to make money is actually
• 74:30 - 75:00 to change what whichever part of production that you're affecting or directly involved at no first um money it's just a question of Independence um we are still a limited company uh we have no investors um the team now is uh 550 people uh 600 people we grew step by step during 20 years we had a lot of
• 75:00 - 75:30 requests to um to um sell the company or to make investors enter we always said no um V could be maybe five times bigger now um but we um we are more at ease with our Rhythm uh with uh developing the company step by step uh having strong roots um better than to raise and uh uh to raise fast and to fall fast
• 75:30 - 76:00 like startups or like the internet uh Vibe so for us profit or profitability is just a question of Independence um but it comes second we do a lot of choices that are not profitable we do a lot of choices that are not uh uh money oriented but I think on the long term uh and people are less and less on the long term people they want to do a
• 76:00 - 76:30 company sell it in three years Etc and for me that's part of the problem of the world uh for us V is not a company it's our life it's what we believe in and we put everything we believe in uh in the company in terms of environment in terms of uh um protecting uh people that are weak um in terms of creating projects that sounds crazy uh at the beginning like for example four
• 76:30 - 77:00 years ago we started to do the first cobbler um we launched a cobbler for sneakers and everybody was saying you're crazy it's never going to work uh and it boomed and today we have 10 in the world we have one in Brooklyn one in New York uh one in New York Brooklyn one in Paris one in Madrid uh maybe one in s Paulo very soon uh and everybody is is going to um to make their sneakers from every Brands like the big Brands V Etc to
• 77:00 - 77:30 repair them to wash them to clean them and for me it's for me it's more um creating A New Path um that shows that um you can be uh super engaged in uh in the reality and doing a company that is sustainable that is not maybe the most profitable uh of the world but for us profits means freedom means no Bankers
• 77:30 - 78:00 no investors no guys in ties coming at the office telling you what you do so that's our freedom and that's that is priceless for us making your own decisions and deciding how you want to deal with the whole chain of production that's yeah I always say that don't chase the money because if you're putting profitability in front of what we actually what's your purpose then the profitability will never come so it's
• 78:00 - 78:30 just like Chase what I say to my team is just like it's important that we know why we're doing this so we wanted to create marketing campaigns that can spread message that can change the world especially because we work a lot of brands on social creating social strategy and social campaigns and then once you deliver a great service great results and really help the brands to change through their message then the profitability will follow but if you put profitability in front of what you're
• 78:30 - 79:00 doing is it's when you start getting you know a little bit distracted and putting your business in a different direction that's not necessary your why that will always be something in the way exactly um so I I find this question very interesting which is how can a Brand's purpose evolve over time because there's also that I mean during especially if you take that's 10 20 50 years obviously that can change and what
• 79:00 - 79:30 are the risks of not revisiting or adapting your purpose in this path during this time I agree that over time we need to review and understand if the the purpose is because as I said in the beginning so purpose is I think everyone is trying to find their own purpose but purpose is something that you constantly are looking at at and adapting but the most important thing uh on my perspective is
• 79:30 - 80:00 keep your vision intact and then you can evolve the the purpose as you as we grow or as you evolve your company or the time goes pass by because the word is changing very rapidly right so it's the purpose has to be aligned as well what your clients are looking for what the customer what you know what we are looking for but if you keep your vision there then I think you will not have a problem of evolving your purpose but I
• 80:00 - 80:30 think for me the vision is the starting point of making its impact to always keep that eye open yeah yes um it's a question of uh what you want to do what you didn't do also um one example we we uh were one of the first company in the world to be B Corp and for us it was a bit uh an American thing you know a bit
• 80:30 - 81:00 corporate a bit boring a bit uh and uh and it it is sometimes huh but when you read the 286 questions uh my my partner he didn't want to do he told me no American Let It Go corporate not for us and um but when we read those uh 286 questions it made me realize that uh
• 81:00 - 81:30 there was a lot of things that we didn't do like one question was paternity um paternity leave uh you know when uh a couple um uh has a baby uh um the father he um he has he in France he had 11 days of uh of holidays to to take care of the baby and so the question was in your company is
• 81:30 - 82:00 it three days 10 days one month or 3 months and we say we we were respecting the low and that's it but we could do we could be more than the LW we could uh go further so for me I just think the principles and um the purpose is every day and so we did in 200 I think 17 or 18 3 months of paternity leave paternity leave sorry um and it changes everything
• 82:00 - 82:30 for the people for the couple uh inside V uh the the role of the Father the RO it creates something that is again Priceless for the rest of the life uh of the couple of for the the role of the mother and the equality of the couple so you can change everything all always uh push forward details uh medium things or big things
• 82:30 - 83:00 it depends on you and your your courage and determination perfect that's a perfect way to wrap it up thank you so much M thank you so much much for having us a pleasure to be here thank you everyone thank you Sebastian an honor for us thank you very much [Music]
• 83:00 - 83:30 [Music] [Music] all right as more devices become capable of running AI features natively we are entering an era where AI will be
• 83:30 - 84:00 fundamental part of our daily experience this transition opens up a world of possibilities for more intuitive personalized and efficient interaction between our devices and The Real World Revolution the way we engage with technology our next speaker will talk to us about smart wearables and the future of how that technology will be personalized for each of you and yes his real real last name is spelled with an A and an i and he's launching a brand new product here on Center Stage this
• 84:00 - 84:30 morning so please give a big Center Stage welcome to the founder and CEO of terminus group Victor [Music] I ai ai a transformative Force shaping our world revolutionizing Our Lives solving challenges or creating problems answering questions raising concern a catalyst for change the power of
• 84:30 - 85:00 [Music] AI thank you thank you thank you Casey uh it's great to be back to web Summit today um hello everyone good morning my name is Victor hi I'm the founder and CEO of terminal group today my topic is
• 85:00 - 85:30 intelligent luxury the future of personalized AI let's be beginning with uh introduction of terminal group so terminal group is a leading aiot company um we are a ice service provider some people might be wondering what is ice is a infrastructure as a Services um actually it's not we'll get to it very soon and we are dedicated to revolutionize human interactions with AI
• 85:30 - 86:00 and bringing AI to everyone so let's take a St uh first look at the fourth stage of human machine interactions uh in the digital era we have the CI and GUI the combin N um interface where you you have different um programming language such as Java python C++ you are communicating with your machines through those languages um
• 86:00 - 86:30 later on with uh windows and office uh those softwares comes out you have the graphical user interface you can just click on the little icon uh buttons and you have the problem solved nowadays we have entered into the intelligent area um with chat GPT and other large language models you can communicate with your machine through conversations and also everyone knows that Elam musk is is doing a brain
• 86:30 - 87:00 machine interface so maybe in the future we can think of what we want to do and the Machine will do it for you so the um intelligence area actually gave rise to the new business model Ice uh it's a intelligence as services so there are are a lot of um technologies that are driven by the uh Ice uh you know uh business model uh for
• 87:00 - 87:30 example there are agentic AI a governance platform we have a disinformation Securities uh energy efficient Computing hybrid Computing spatial uh Computing um po functional robots and exal so from our point of view um this whole journey starts with generative AI where you have the uh large language model and self-supervised or
• 87:30 - 88:00 semi-supervised models and so that uh the the AI can actually start to provide services to human beings then we are at where we are today uh we are with a lot of AI agents in the world uh they can solve problems uh they can do multimodality multimodel uh capabilities and you have a cognitive science practical reasoning and in the future uh we'll quickly get into AGI you know a lot of people are are arguing about that
• 88:00 - 88:30 um some Alman says we're are going to get to AGI in 2016 uh 20 yes 2026 sorry um you know he give a very specific time and some people saying we will never get to HGI so what is HGI I think in our view the aggi should should have a super pure agent and uh with embod intelligence and finally will have a super um intelligence uh okay so today uh we want
• 88:30 - 89:00 to introduce the first generation of AGI agent created by Terminus group let's see what you can do um you know we are see staying um in the world that there are hundreds of millions of thousands or billions of Agents um there are probably more AI agents than human beings in the future so each agent just like our
• 89:00 - 89:30 ourselves they will be expert in different things all the agents together will need to work with each other we need to have the Synergy with each other work as a team and get the results and get the problem solved therefore we want to create a superior agent who can Master those multi-agents uh in the future we'll just talk to One agent and she will be coordinating with all the different guys um here we are this
• 89:30 - 90:00 our um um super agent created by uh terminal we'll have a little video saying what she can do h h two more guests are going to join us for the 9:00 a.m. meeting hi Tony the meeting room we booked only fits up to eight people I'm on it [Music] try taking the stairs to level three you can catch elevator 7 I'll hold the
• 90:00 - 90:30 elevator for you relax a song please don't so this is office scenario where hary can be your assistant when you go to office wish me love [Music]
• 90:30 - 91:00 so we'll see one more with your real life yeah your taxi will be here in 10 minutes those are actually the real functions we have achieved nowadays yeah that gives me just enough time can you grab me some coffee bad news the coffee shop you like has a bit of a line about 30 minutes good news is that the cafe on the first floor has a new blend and they've got your favorite Yun beans want to give it a
• 91:00 - 91:30 shot sounds like GRE your order is ready you can grab it on your way out no not this one nice weather outside try something thinner try the new sweatshirt look nice don't forget your chargers SS thank for head up yeah I hope I can have one of her with me every day every
• 91:30 - 92:00 time your taxi has been waiting for you for 5 minutes should I ask him to wait for a bit longer oops my bad I'm heading out right [Music] now so here we are um Avatar of Terminators AGI agent Hari so it's um metum from one of the uh
• 92:00 - 92:30 favorite um scientific fiction novel solarist so she's um uh SE guies of the good counil but also we think we call it hardly because we want to have the compilation of hello AI uh is one of the sentiment emotion we want to send to our customers so I raise a question here does anyone knows what is the guess what's the official birth date of
• 92:30 - 93:00 har yes you're are very smart so we'll give the official birthday today November 14th 2024 uh a easy question uh where is the birth place yes so it's in right here right now in the website is in Lisbon so um so here are some some intelligence behind har uh you know uh one of this is uh we call it slow thinking so as opposed to
• 93:00 - 93:30 uh you know talk to a chat GPT or large language model you know you ask a question it will very quickly give you an answer but that's not how our human beings think right if you are human beings you you are facing a problem you will start to do digest the problem understanding it um doing some investigation make some plan some actions then get a problem solved that's how people should think you should think slowly uh then take actions so hardy
• 93:30 - 94:00 will do like a human beings okay secondly is a perception of the physical world um you know through its multimodality capability um how will be able to uh understand the real world through his eyes so its ear so its Sensations and all the uh you know all of the like eye and sensors so once she understand the word understand the real question and
• 94:00 - 94:30 problem she will use tools to solve those problems so that's like a human Nature's what we have the third one uh which different hardly from other um language model is she has she has a l memory okay as you may know um most of the chat GPT U models they will have short memory okay he will forget why you guys are are talking about after 3 hours right so it's like entering into as a in in the movie you are you have a short
• 94:30 - 95:00 memory and you are total stranger the second day you wake up but with Harley with the capability she will be able to know who you are she will memorize what's your favorite coffee what's your favorite food and uh what jokes you talk to her last night and where was where you stay in the hotel in London last week so uh inventure will be become U your assistant that can accompany you in a long time in your life so the last one
• 95:00 - 95:30 uh is a teamw working so as I mentioned earlier there are hundred of thousands of different agents in the world uh you know you have to work with different agents so hardy can work with Microsoft can work with chat gbt can work with all the different AI agents and get the job down for you so that's a lot of amazing um you know functions har has as opposed to a a general and agent so where is Hardy where can we
• 95:30 - 96:00 find that we believe the best habitat for hary could be should be in the Consumer Electronics therefore we have create a luxury consumer electronic brand called buttons okay so buttons is co-founded by Victor ey and Global celebrities yes this Victor ey right here um so our vision for buttons is to bring better life through Technologies um so who what is buttons
• 96:00 - 96:30 so buttons are an intelligent luxury Tech brand um it has disruptive designs um disruptive experience disruptive Innovations uh these are all the histal celebrity collaboration we had and also buttons will offer a premium quality with a decade of meticulous crafts man ship so in the past our product has been loved by brand ambassadors and
• 96:30 - 97:00 friends so today we want to put combine Hardy and buttons together guess what we will get first we will be happy to announce that we are releasing uh our buttons pop product it is um earphone with hard insight uh you have autonomous playist generation natural language interaction with hardi you can do the intelligent
• 97:00 - 97:30 navigation and realtime translation so it will be released today um I think people can search it on the internet you will find the buttons for sale um everywhere so we have a different colors white silver gold black and the red ones I like the red ones the one is the antiw war special edition for Europe so let's see um the real product there are some we can change um
• 97:30 - 98:00 the cover of the products with uh you know different shape we provide all the DIY um U experience to our customers so available now um also secondly we will be providing button SCP it's a open varable uh stereo which means you don't have to plug in the earphone into your ears and it also has
• 98:00 - 98:30 hard inside and uh you know it's a bone conduction headset uh yeah also comes with different colors and different patterns you'll be released uh in 2025 the first quarter so what are are we U bringing to the world in the next 12 months uh as you may say in the near uh future in the next three months is will have buttons top buttons clip we have uh buttons Vision X which is the the world's lightest and most powerful AI AR glasses
• 98:30 - 99:00 um you know it's half a weight of the ribbon meta glasses and with ar functions and you can uh you know do a lot of uh very strong um AI uh AI works with it um so in the next 12 months we are bringing to the word the bracelet the Rings necklace piers portable TV smart screen smart cockpit um compaining robots everything with hard inside okay so where is har so har we
• 99:00 - 99:30 have har in the ears har in the eyes hard in the speaker hard in the cars har in the house it's like a song right so so um we found uh there's a possible way U of our future of a personalized AI so we combined find hard and buttons together and we create a new category of products uh it's called intelligent
• 99:30 - 100:00 luxury um I hope um you know uh we can be in a world with Hardy and um buttons uh everywhere I'll give you um um a little video for that batt on oops what
• 100:00 - 100:30 [Music] happen battles [Music] on Holly Holly choose the song for me please [Music]
• 100:30 - 101:00 [Music] [Applause] [Music] deep press h h find an ex nearby for me please [Music] [Music]
• 101:00 - 101:30 hello AI H H yeah fascinating right I hope I can live in the world with hard inside with Hardy everywhere so this is all I want to share with you guys today um thank you everyone thank thank you [Music]
• 101:30 - 102:00 [Music] [Music]
• 102:00 - 102:30 that uh hle thing is pretty cool just remember Lisbon it's on you if it tries to take over the world was born here all right The Craze for AI is like the craze for a Taylor Swift concert never ending while we know Tay Tay is in Canada right now for the final leg of her erors tour what we don't know is where all the VC dollars are going next in AI despite the billions of dollars of investment
• 102:30 - 103:00 profits are hard to come by IPOs even less so should VCS be looking in other areas to invest what is the next big thing to find out where VCS are placing their AI bets in conversation with Ben Bergman a Business Insider please welcome to Center Stage partner at Coastal Adventures canu Gatti the founder and general partner of Bank Corner Point Rashmi gointha and founding partner of 776 Caitlyn Holloway
• 103:00 - 103:30 [Music] all right well Taylor Swift is uh not here but we're very excited to have you guys here better than Taylor Swift I think because we're going to find out
• 103:30 - 104:00 where you guys are writing your checks and if you can briefly say what you're most interested in right now what kinds of companies are you most interested in and what kinds of companies are you a little bit tired of hearing about and let's start with you Caitlyn absolutely well uh good morning good afternoon Lisbon thank you all for being here I'm Caitlyn Holloway founding partner of venture capital firm 776 uh we are early stage generalists uh my partner is Alexis Ohanian and are we
• 104:00 - 104:30 going to keep going on what I like and what I don't like immediately what are you most excellent this is like speed dating all right what I like I love deep Tech I love space Tech I love climate Tech I like anything that is at the precipice of a cultural shift and a cultural change uh Sports I think are really really interesting especially in the age of AI um and what I don't like I'm and sports is is works on a venture scale explain that it does it does um I I think you
• 104:30 - 105:00 know in the spirit of of AI and how AI is is eating the world right now in probably what we think is a good way hence the panel um but I do think that that Sports is one of the last great human truly authentic pillars that is never going to go away the excitement of being in an arena the excitement of seeing uh a fellow fan as you cross the street and have that moment of belongingness I think that is a very deeply uniquely Human Experience that is not going away and so yeah Sports is absolutely growing um and you're seeing
• 105:00 - 105:30 a lot of different types of of people investing in that space now what kinds of companies are you a little bit tired of hearing about you know I would be fine if I never saw another dating app I would be totally fine all right all the dating app Founders have just uh left the lost the crowd and uh what about you tell us what kinds of companies you're most interested in and what which ones you're a little bit tired of so hi everyone very excited to be here my name is kanu
• 105:30 - 106:00 I'm a partner at Coastal Ventures this is a multi-stage fund based out of San Francisco but invest globally my background is in P PhD is in deep Tech uh focused on Hardware acceleration and I soon realized the only thing really worth speeding up on Hardware that is gpus and custom I's uh was Ai and so over the last decade I've been trying to keep up with all the advances of AI so I continue to be very very excited about how early we are in the innings for AI
• 106:00 - 106:30 and the impact it can have on Humanity specifically uh increasingly we are investing in Services as software which is already going beyond what a co-pilot can do so co-pilot can help with making an engineer 10x more productive or a marketing person 10x more productive we are focusing on applications that can agents can allowed to do automation of an entire task end to end maybe under still some human supervision but that allows every human to now have an army
• 106:30 - 107:00 of interns and that can impact the GDP of a country we think these are very ambitious goals and that's very very exciting to continue backing related to that um increasingly robotics is an application of AI That's one of another areas we are very very excited about uh the similar Theses like just like large language models allow for generalization on a variety of tasks uh the emerging Behavior similarly there is a thesis that the large language model for robotics will allow Investments and
• 107:00 - 107:30 improvements in generalizable uh applications Beyond a task specific model um and and then lastly we've been investing in Sovereign models meaning for different geopolitical centers or different countries there might be an open AI for that country we've already invested in Japan uh company called Sakana uh similarly a company in India called sarvam and we are very excited about continuing looking for Sovereign models around the world and are you seeing a lot of dating apps as well are you tired of that so um
• 107:30 - 108:00 I aspire to be uh an investor who does not get jaded I think there's always room for innovation no matter the market no matter the area no matter the stage um I want to understand what is a big opportunity and the how we should think about the set of risk we need to retire and I'm up for listening for any pitch all right and uh rashman what are you most interested in these days hi everyone really excited to be here I'm Rashmi goad I'm co-founder and general partner at BAM Corner point where an
• 108:00 - 108:30 early growth stage fund focused specifically on Enterprise technology uh spending a lot of time on the infrastructure space it's what I've done for the past 20 plus years uh really excited about the opportunity for a rearching of the infrastructure layer that's going to be needed for the um massive acceleration that we've seen and the AI space is spending a lot of time in spaces like cyber security developer tools uh the orchestration layer that is all going through a very interesting uh
• 108:30 - 109:00 rebuild or transformation uh as we speak uh Healthcare Tech is another space that I'm really excited about uh it's a 4 trillion GDP line item just in the US and an industry that has historically been uh fairly behind in terms of adopting new technologies despite the massive amounts of data that exists in that in that sector uh so really excited in terms of how Ai and automation can help bring a lot of productivity and uh efficiency of care delivery at lower
• 109:00 - 109:30 cost uh within that industry um jaded I would say not not so much um there's definitely I would say a time where everything can be thought of in a in a new way whether that's sales Tech whether that's product Tech whether that's um selling into supply chain or vertical Industries so really excited about the new wave of companies that are coming up in many of these spaces that I haven't seen innovation in a very long time and there's this thing called
• 109:30 - 110:00 generative Ai No one's talked about at this conference but you know if a Founder comes to you and they don't have ai in their startup are you even going to look at it and and where do you find Opportunities because a lot of these companies especially at the llm level reached massive massive valuations what are you most excited about in finding value in AI Caitlyn you know I think I I think the reality is is that AI is going to be a part of our Lives you know for for as long as we can see and I think
• 110:00 - 110:30 that to your point there are a number of companies who are are using it appropriately and using it to augment their business to find efficiency moving towards profitability sooner um all things that that are very very good for business in general um would I reject a a pitch for something that doesn't have ai uh no I I think that there's still there's still room for that I think um you know there there are a lot of opportunities to use buzzwords to to get dollars and that's typically um hard to
• 110:30 - 111:00 navigate and kind of see through that's not it's not difficult to see through that but I I do think that um it's it's becoming so commonplace and and so everyday that it really is not something to to necessarily need to talk about on the nose um we'll see it we'll see it in how you're presenting we'll see it in how you your product looks in those early early pitches and again you know we're early stage v um Venture capitalists that are generalists and so we're seeing everything across the Spectrum and so yeah if if someone
• 111:00 - 111:30 doesn't drop the word AI uh it's not an auto pass for sure and you touched on this already but where do you see the most value right now uh obviously you guys have done open Ai and you know we all know about that but what else are you interested in uh yes we were fortunate enough to be one of the earliest Venture investors in Opa in a big way one of the largest initial text we ever wrote um I think the pace of advancements in AI is just unprecedented uh in the last 3 years the cost of
• 111:30 - 112:00 serving a model which is you know running inference on the model has come down by 1,000x uh the you know the most recent announcements by uh openai an new model called the 01 model uses reinforcement learning in an outer loop uh and apply something known as Chain of Thought just makes reasoning significantly better um claud's anthropic new product called computer use has been now being robustly tested with like hey just summ watch
• 112:00 - 112:30 this video and summarize it for me and it's it's not perfect but the advancement is so amazing that I do think AI is in the front runner of the set of technologies that can have an impact in very near future so we definitely want to understand what is the how can we rethink a solution because of this increased capability but having said that you know c ventes as as a firm we've invested in nuclear fusion Technologies we've invested in human compatible organs grown in pigs like we are not shy from taking ambitious bets
• 112:30 - 113:00 even outside of AI and uh what what about you uh what is your thoughts on what you're most excited about in Ai and what you feel like is maybe a little overvalued um there's a lot of things that are massively overvalued uh at this point and uh we obviously are pretty excited about the the massive uh companies that can be created but I think we've all realized what the impact can be if we overv value things too early on and um they don't live up to
• 113:00 - 113:30 the expectations as what we had seen back in 2020 and 21 uh but in terms of what we're really excited about AI if we kind of like break that down into different layers um on the uh core I would say compute side uh there's definitely the emergence of um alternatives to gpus there's um acceleration technologies that we're seeing at the chip layer um there are companies that are providing specialized GPU clouds uh although that market seems
• 113:30 - 114:00 to be kind of saturated right now stepping up into the uh llm layers um don't think there's a need for yet another foundational model company to be built uh uh in that space just given again the massive scale that the companies that are already in there um are at but the layers above that I think are all really exciting uh everything from the middleware layer to the uh security stack to the uh developer tools that are being built around that the
• 114:00 - 114:30 application layer stack where every application even if you take CRM as an example um there is a net new way of thinking through how AI can really power a very different user experience which is not driven off of the concept of a database or a system of record but it's around how do you create a personal agent for the sales rep that's out in the field and mapping the workflows to that and then the database becomes replaceable I you can put anything in the back end and it doesn't matter what
• 114:30 - 115:00 the user sees on a daily basis is the system that they interact with so I think it's a great opportunity to rethink everything that we've think we've thought about and an opportunity to create the next snowflake the next service now the next Salesforce uh which is really exciting so I think there's a lot to keep us busy I've been meeting so many exciting Young Founders this week here in Lisbon we have a lot in the audience what is the quality that you most look for in Founders and what is the biggest mistake that you see them
• 115:00 - 115:30 make oh there are so many things that I look for uh when investing in new companies I think in this day and age we definitely look for some of those core human uh experiences and how people manage through trying time so looking for resilience agility their ability to show up and really be compelling I think that that is underrated in a a Founder assessment um but you know for for context my background before becoming an Institutional Investor um I led people in culture team so I'm an HR lady turned
• 115:30 - 116:00 investor and so of course my my advice to Young Founders or or people who are just building something for the first time um it's going to be people related and so you know one of my first uh pieces of advice is if they are hard to hire they will be hard to manage and they will be hard to Fire and in every single one of those buckets IC Founders make those mistakes time and time again uh you know going overboard and trying to get that person that has all of the logos um who's been really challenging
• 116:00 - 116:30 to bring on board and really convince them of the vision and Mission but you're enamored with you know the the halo effect of their resume um and then consequently once you've hired someone and it's not working out uh not being able to quickly identify that and so another old HR adage is uh hire slowly fire quickly I very much subscribe to that um and then of course you know I'm always there to help coach them through the the the back end of all of those things but uh definitely be very very mindful of how you're building your team
• 116:30 - 117:00 how you're developing your team and and how quickly you're you're making those hard decisions so that you can uh come out successful on the other side so would you have hired Elon Musk well now why are we getting so spicy first of all I don't think I would have been in a position I'm much younger but thank you founder mode what about you what do you uh most look for in young founders I said part of this already there are these two chief job quotes which I really like but one of them talks about the power of Storytelling uh so having
• 117:00 - 117:30 that big Vision that is super important and then the sequence of risk that you hope to retire in order to get to that big vision and then depending on the stage the market the the opportunity that will change but that being very consistent and coherent is very very important um and it could allow you to also Dr risk the higher because that becomes very important because you know we we think about very strongly that the people you hire is the company you're going to build not so much the plans you make on paper and the contrary of that
• 117:30 - 118:00 is also true in terms of what I think is the biggest shortcoming sometimes is the founders are not aiming high enough to get the first set of hires um this is like I said the second cheve job quotes about play a players will hire a players but B players might hire C players and C players will hire D players and so on and you want to continue keeping the the core strength of the company to be really high and that's very important Rashmi what is the thing you look for in young Founders um there's definitely a
• 118:00 - 118:30 very long list but um I would say especially in the age of AI uh having the intellectual curiosity and the ability to be decisive and know what's going on in the market because things are changing at such rapid Pace that if you're um not aware of what's going out there and how do you quickly change pivot adapt to the changes that are going on in the environment you can quickly become irrelevant um so just having that Curiosity having the ability to taken
• 118:30 - 119:00 feedback and make decisions quickly that's that's needed um a mistake I would say uh that I see often is not having the uh a focus at that early stage where you can obviously do 50 different things but as a small company with limited resources you can't do 50 different things so what is that one thing that you're going to do really well and how do you really get that perfect that's important because otherwise if you're again with your early set of customers if you try to be everything to everyone um you're going
• 119:00 - 119:30 to be not known for that one great thing well we are almost to the end of 2025 Venture funding has been down uh 15% since last year it probably be down a lot more without what you guys did in open Ai and some of the other llms but if we can end with each of you giving three brief predictions for what you're EXP and VC in 2025 I think we're going to see uh continued focus on early stage I think that the real opportunities will be in the earliest you know first checkin High
• 119:30 - 120:00 ownership um I think that you know back to that focus on profitability and efficiency at the earliest days so so to your point around Focus um and I think that the third one is really going to be around those culture shifts and those culture change agents people that are really coming in and are able to see around corners that that don't exist and how those relate to all of these you know new technologies that have been being built kind of in quiet for the last you know two decades really between space and and AI everything is now kind
• 120:00 - 120:30 of coming to the surface and becoming much more a part of the the common language and so anyone who's building around those that has been building kind of quietly and and disciplined are going to come to the Forefront now our investment Horizon is 7 to 10 years and so looking at that directionally I feel there will be some changes happening already in the year 2025 but I'd much rather be held to these predictions for the next 5 to seven year time frame uh starting with more real time voice and video
• 120:30 - 121:00 generation and all the applications that that can be enabled uh more compute on the edge so variables uh handhelds and all of that also leading to uh robotics in multiple forms uh just all around us uh and especially humanoid because the world is designed for humans rash made three predictions you get the last word um one I would say is that AI in the Enterprise is going to be a lot more pervasive I think we're already seeing the initial set of use cases throughout the ROI uh it's just going to end up
• 121:00 - 121:30 becoming a lot more mainstream um second I would say on the consumer side um having a personal assistant we just saw the demo before this panel I think that's also going to become a lot more mainstream where uh each one of us is going to have the ability to again increase productivity significantly in our personal lives just as we do in our professional lives and third um I'm very optimistic about um the uh IPOs coming back uh there's a really interesting
• 121:30 - 122:00 pipeline of companies that have the scale have the profitability have the ability to become really amazing public companies um and I do think that the Market's going to be right for it let's hope so well thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts and thank you for joining us today thank you thank you [Music]
• 122:00 - 122:30 wow pretty big right excellent all right
• 122:30 - 123:00 our newest addition to websummit family is uh websummit Qatar focused on the exciting Tech ecosystem in the Middle East for first year event in the incredible city of Doha this past February we welcomed over 15,000 attendees over 1,000 startups and 400 plus investors from around the world and it was an eye-opening experience at the end the Qatar investment Authority launched a us one billion doll Venture
• 123:00 - 123:30 Capital fund of funds for international and Regional Venture Capital funds just an incredible amount of funding is being prepared for startups in fintech sports Tech cyber security clean tech and more as the country becomes a leading force in the Mina Tech ecosystem safe Kazi is the CEO of Urban point a tail Co powered Marketplace based in Doha safe thank you for joining us thanks for having me what are two things about Qatar you
• 123:30 - 124:00 think your fellow startup Founders would benefit in knowing about uh well thanks for having me um here's the thing I can tell you uh more than two things I think so okay but just let's keep it to two well I'll try all right so so the thing is you know Urban point we started as an NBA project in Germany and what many people don't know is that we actually moved to qar to launch our startup and when we made that decision we had never even visited qar ever in our life and what we did is we
• 124:00 - 124:30 looked at a bunch of uh different critical success factors for startups like uh uh uh you know um access to Capital cost of doing business uh smartphone penetration and we compared a bunch of different countries on those factors and surprisingly cut came out on top and the more we looked into it the the more it made sense because what we realize is that when you want to launch a new business idea you want to test that in a small ecosystem so Q is a
• 124:30 - 125:00 small country of 2.5 million people but highly Advanced and it is an excellent place where you can test new ideas and you can uh innovate validate your ideas pivot if needed and then expand into other markets and that's exactly what we did um what's also interesting is 85% of the population and cut are basically expats so it's got this beautiful diversity of cultures people from you know everywhere from Portugal to
• 125:00 - 125:30 Pakistan to Philippines and Palestine and um you know so so by default the language of business is English so you don't need Arabic uh in order to do business in qar I don't speak Arabic right and then the support for entrepreneurs locally uh by the from from the government is is like nothing else in the world startups get free offices free accelerators free mentorship free international expansion programs um the corporate tax rate is 10% income tax is 0% the free uh access
• 125:30 - 126:00 to exhibitions like this all over the world so so this is unparalleled and then finally I think what's very important is you know the access to local talent it's it's amazing because you've got universities like Georgetown and Carnegie melon and HC Paris all of them have campuses in qar wow and and they produce World world-class Talent locally right so so I know I I wouldn't say you go on and on and on but there's one last thing I want to ask you yeah um how do you say startups in
• 126:00 - 126:30 Arabic that's a funny one because I don't speak Arabic and you're going to get me in trouble but you know Pepsi in Arabic is bsy so I guess startups in Arabic are startups okay great that awesome awesome awesome cool thank you uh and if you don't mind can we do a selfie so I can do a humble brag on LinkedIn okay awesome everybody we're going to be in together here quickly all right let's do one great awesome all right thank you everybody this is websummit Qatar
• 126:30 - 127:00 [Applause] [Music] [Music]
• 127:00 - 127:30 all right I recently learned the time to produce a 15minute YouTube clip shoot to edit to upload can take 5 hours at its shortest
• 127:30 - 128:00 but then after that how do you make sure the content is great and stands out when there is an infinite amount of it out there to talk about Fame going viral and creating a mega audience in conversation with Carmela boyin from The Washington Post please welcome the singer songwriter with over 50 million followers on Tik Tok Lauren Gray and the ultimate superar video creator of over 50 million followers on Facebook superar
• 128:00 - 128:30 [Music] Blondie hello hello hello good morning everyone my name is Carmela boyin I'm a host and producer at the Washington Post and I'm joined by two massive content creators this morning Alex Hershey and Lauren
• 128:30 - 129:00 Gray thank you for being here thanks for having us thank you our panel today this morning is called this is how you create great content something you both are naturally experts at so for your respective Brands what does it mean to create great content what does that look like you want to go sure um for me it's always been audience first whatever I can find that I'm passionate about in my life that connects to my audience finding that blend between the two has always worked best for me yeah I think for me
• 129:00 - 129:30 when I started it was really about being specific to each platform you know I recognized very early on that what works on YouTube doesn't work on Facebook what works on Facebook doesn't work on Instagram so uh foras about is creating great content is about really knowing what your audience wants to see on each platform M now Alex when you started your Supercar content creation you of course weren't this massive brand it was a side hustle for you you were a radio host in duby and then when you went
• 129:30 - 130:00 full-time you were traveling 300 days out of the year with your husband bus Club another club another club uh you were writing shooting editing doing everything yourself running the business yourself how does that content creation process look different now and then wow so different as you said yeah it was it was me first full-time I quit my job on the radio then my husband joined me a year later and so yeah it was just us to and we literally like had three shoots a day and then we head to whatever hotel we were staying in around the world and then edit and produce and upload until
• 130:00 - 130:30 2: a.m. and then we do the whole thing again right now I have a an incredible team um of uh producers editors uh journalists uh and people who were actually constantly looking for incredible content we have a team of 70 people now so uh it's kind of really grown just since co uh because we couldn't travel around the world anymore just the two of us and and create great content like it just the World closed down so we need to work out well how are we going to keep great
• 130:30 - 131:00 content on our platform that's by hiring and and having a bigger team to be able to help fantastic and Lauren for you your start is quite interesting because you were publishing to the web at musically the predecessor for TiK ToK by accident you thought you were saving to your camera roll those videos were uploading at the same time and gaining a following so how's the creation process changed for you I feel like the content creation process is always evolving I always have that thread of similarities
• 131:00 - 131:30 between the content from when I first started to now it's all very in the moment it's all authentic and organic to me and what I'm going through or what I'm experiencing but you know the formatting is always changing platforms are always changing uh at the time at the musically in that era was 15-second videos now we have reals Tik Tok has grown from 15 seconds to now a minute 10 minutes even
• 131:30 - 132:00 so it's just about keeping up and staying up to dat with what's happening and sort of modeling your content to fit that while having that continuous thread of what keeps you you and the content for you revolves so much around you being a human being how do you find a balance between living your life and posting your your life I mean I'm I'm a little spoiled in the sense that I started so young that it never felt like a job it was just
• 132:00 - 132:30 second nature it was something that I love doing that grew into a career there are times where I feel a little burnt out I'm like man I don't look good today I don't feel good today I don't want to post today and I've learned that at those times I just have to take a step back and take take that time because it's very easy to feel burnt out but my life is so exciting and I get to so many incredible things and even when it's not people want to see that too that's relatable and that's um what I follow creators for is to see their day-to-day
• 132:30 - 133:00 life whether that be them having the most exciting day ever or the most mundane day real and talking about sustainability and burnout Alex you've talked about how being exclusively a long a content creator longterm isn't sustainable so you've been proactive in that by building Ventures you have a media company SB media and S SPX cars your luxury car auction company that launched earlier this year what has it been like building those companies leading those companies and being a content creator on top of that yeah so for me it was really important like unlike you Lauren I started the
• 133:00 - 133:30 media g a social media game later in life I started in my 30s so for me I knew I didn't have you know 20 30 years to build everything I was like right you know I need to build now you know um otherwise I'm going to be 50 and still a content creator nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with it like it's exhausting as you know right so you know you have to try build out uh as soon as as soon as possible so um yeah I think when everything shut down to 2020 that's when I really had to re-evaluate and say this isn't sustainable just to be a
• 133:30 - 134:00 oneperson content creator uh so I thought about uh bringing on new Talent new hosts new presenters to represent the brand so we have uh four four or five different presenters now which is fantastic which means that I'm only really in about 5% of the videos which means that yeah I I went through major burnouts in in 2020 um I wasn't sleeping anymore I was sleeping maybe 2 hours a night I had major anxiety depression everything and I hadn't taken that time
• 134:00 - 134:30 out for myself in 3 years I probably didn't have a day off in 3 years so at that point I thought right I need to I need to think this is life it's a journey journey there's no end goal so I needed to work out right how is this going to be sustainable from a mental health point of view and physical health point of view I started taking some days off and now I'm just like a different person now I can actually enjoy what I do again because at one point we were just grafting so hard that I was like oh my God I I don't even know why we're doing this anymore you know cuz there
• 134:30 - 135:00 was no balance there was no balance in life and now there is do you think that intensity was essential to building your brand would you change anything about your journey yeah it's a good question and I always look back at this and go did could we have taken it a little bit easier I don't think so I think it was necessary to really really grind those first few years because the competition is just so hardcore on on social media so you really need to be out there every single day creating content otherwise you get left behind so I think it was necessary uh now it's good that I built
• 135:00 - 135:30 kind of built it more into a a a media publishing company so that I'm not totally involved in every single aspect and now I've got this other business of the auction platform but um so now I have a little bit more of time to myself but initially I think if you're going to become a Creator or want to become a Creator it takes those those heart times to do it yeah that grinding has paid off though because earlier this year xbbx cars also broke the world record in June for the most valuable car ever sold
• 135:30 - 136:00 online it was a Lamborghini for $6 million is that an important metric to you how does that feel really good uh you know we're we're trying to disrupt the uh the auction car auction world it's been the same for 100 years where you know you have your you have your very uh formal events around the world and everyone's wearing a suit in a Time and and they come in once every 3 months and bid on beautiful cars H and we want to disrupt that because there's a whole new world now of people buying cars and not everyone has the time or or
• 136:00 - 136:30 even the the want to go fly into a different country and be there in person to bit on a car so now we've brought it all online and uh to be selling multi-million dollar cars online we were like is it going to work you know let's let's give it a go uh we have a lot of uh incredible um uh uh car um collectors around the world that do follow us and it it's it's working and I was like well this is this is awesome I mean we're learning as we go obviously um we've got
• 136:30 - 137:00 a lot more data now that we can work on and and build and grow but to to sell the the the world's most expensive car online within yeah a few months of launch was awesome yeah fantastic I want to beat it though real can be better yeah even top $6 million yeah um speaking of working Lauren you've also been working um especially Beyond in influencing you're a singer songwriter if you have an album out your song Queen has over 80 million streams on Spotify you've opened for American Musician hunter haze on tour and you're in a
• 137:00 - 137:30 Netflix movie you're so young you have already done so much so what are you most proud of and where would you like to build next I've done a lot of cool stuff and I'm really really proud of everything that I've done but the the fan base and the audience that I've been able to maintain and facilitate over the past 9 years is the most special that connection is something I really really needed when I first started social media I was homeschooled I was in my room by myself and I had no friends
• 137:30 - 138:00 and that that Community has carried me so far so I think that is what I'm the most proud and excited about and that's what gets me up in the morning but beyond that I mean the Netflix movie was really cool and um the music is also incredible that's something I've been doing for a long time now too I guess it's been six years of um between working with the label and now being independent uh so I I'm proud of everything and I'm proud of being here I'm proud that I get to sit here and
• 138:00 - 138:30 speak with all of you um but the the fan base is what brings me back time and time again fantastic and also in terms of building and having a nice fan base you've talked about moments with them in your career where you've been going through it in your personal life but you've been able to maintain your brand throughout how have you been able to do that I mean my brand is me and I'm a disaster sometimes and I think when I was 13 in my room by myself I was really searching and really would have loved to have someone that I could look at and
• 138:30 - 139:00 relate to and feel less alone so if I get to be that for at least one other person that that is my purpose on social media and that's what keeps me going um I have I've had a lot of bad moments I've had a lot of bad moments publicly but I think those are just as important to share and I always been very transparent with my audience absolutely you talked a little bit about mental health struggles as well physical stress symptoms is there anything else or any advice you have for people who are going
• 139:00 - 139:30 through burnout and content creation um yeah it's it's hard to notice the the signs of burnout when you've never been through it before I think you know you just think what's wrong with me I I don't understand what's going on uh you need to I think you really need to listen to those around you who go there's there's something not right here you know you're you're you're just not who you meant to be and and you try and bat it away a little bit you're like no I'm fine I'm fine like let's just keep going um listen to the people who love you and around you and if they notice something is wrong just just try and do something
• 139:30 - 140:00 about it actually go and see someone like I had I had mental health support I went to see a therapist and it helped me so so much get get through that uh period of time and also just take as much as like we understand that it takes a grind every single day your audience will be there for you when you need when you want to come back you know if if you if you need two months off where you really just you talk to them about it be open about it hey guys I'm really struggling right now like what I did is
• 140:00 - 140:30 I I uploaded a really just a video um really authentic video just saying listen guys I'm really struggling right now I've got my sister I just flew my sister over to help me now this is my sister I introduced my sister my friends they're helping me now get get through this they're going to create some content as well and you just kind of talk your audience through what you're going through and then they'll be there for you I think it's really important just to be open about it yeah absolutely and in those moments where maybe you're not necessarily super burnt out but maybe you're creatively stuck I make Tik toks at the Washington Post and
• 140:30 - 141:00 sometimes I look at the stories and I think about what I need to do and I'm like H what do I even do um when you guys get in Creative ruts what are some things that help you or what do you do to be inspired well I think when you've when you create content for a long time and I'm sure you might experience this as well I'm very Jaded by my own life there's a lot of things that I do that are interesting that I forget are parts of me that I could be sharing um recently I've been trying to think outside of the box of what I usually
• 141:00 - 141:30 post about I I bought a house in Pennsylvania it's a 300-year-old farmhouse and I didn't think anyone would care and I did a house tour with another Creator and everyone loved it and that was not something that people expected from me that was not something I expected people to love but I think sometimes stepping outside the box and looking at your life or looking at your brand from another perspective and and thinking from a consumer's point of view what would I like to see from this person what would I find interesting um
• 141:30 - 142:00 because it's very easy to be jaded and not see yourself in the same light as other people might uh so yeah I think just stepping outside and and trying to see another angle yeah yeah same I agree I think you know my brand has been so car focused super car Blondie um that sometimes when I need a little bit of a break from Cars the other content I love is you know watches jewelry housing and that's what makes me happy so when I go into a
• 142:00 - 142:30 different direction uh you know I can do cars cars cars cars and then a house I'm like oh it's refreshing to me so when it's refreshing to me and I feel inspired by it then it actually refreshes the whole content and the whole audience as well even though some people are like this is not a car in the comments you know like yeah I know it's a house yeah um but you know you have to you have to kind of uh step out of your content sometimes and do other things that you love yeah real also related to
• 142:30 - 143:00 advice there are a lot of startup Founders and owners in the audience do you have any advice for people who' like to start creating content or start creating content for their brands go ahead okay uh yeah I think start creating content I think if you want to become a content creator because so many people do now when you ask kids at school you know what do you want to be content creator the um it is not a quick or easy way of having a career that's the first thing everyone needs to know that um I think there's a there was a
• 143:00 - 143:30 stat I was looking at just today that uh 95% of content creators make less than $50,000 a year you know and that's that's a salary that it's not like you can suddenly buy a house and buy cars and like be a rich content creator you know it is it is very hard and I think if you want to do it if you're committed to it you can but what you need to do is find first of all find a niche you need to look at there's so much competition
• 143:30 - 144:00 every day new people are joining social media so has it been done before if it has been done before how do you make it different and you need to do it every single day and just keep pushing out content at the end of the year you might get one viral video that's normal you can't expect to go viral overnight so to that just have that kind of long term planning goal and then look at the data and go why did that video go viral what did I do differently and then double down on that and keep doing that yeah true I always to your point say
• 144:00 - 144:30 consistency is the number one thing it might take 10 20 videos to a year of posting videos for something to hit and I also think a lot of times people are making content that they're not necessarily passionate about but that they think is going to work to get them from point A to point B so I think when you're when you're pursuing a career or even promoting a brand it's something that you have to be passionate about because audiences are so aware and audiences can see it's very transparent when you're not connected to the content
• 144:30 - 145:00 so that would be number two and number three I think engaging with the audience is something that people Overlook but building an audience that social media is all about that connection that's what differentiates it from traditional media from film from TV from music is that personal connection that you get so really really maintaining that and doing your best to facilitate that and talk to as many people as you can reach out make sure you keep the fans engaged that is number one above anything absolutely I
• 145:00 - 145:30 was passionate about that one should be you're an expert um my final question for you is you're both highly accomplished have massive audiences but what's next what are you looking forward to I love creating content I don't think I'll ever get sick of it as long as I take breaks when I need to um obviously the film industry is something that I'm pursuing now I had a great experience and I'm looking forward to more and more music and just seeing what comes my way and trusting my instincts yeah uh for me it is uh building out on these other
• 145:30 - 146:00 businesses that I've created so really turning uh going from content creator to Media publisher um I've got an editorial website now where I have journalists around the world writing about uh our content and then the auction uh auction house which is a huge focus of mine and then next year we're also going into um uh events car events space so we've kind of got we're we're planning out you know what the next even 10 15 20 years looks like it's kind of more of a long-term Vision at the moment yeah fantastic
• 146:00 - 146:30 looking forward to both of your future Alex Hershey super car Blandy and Lauren Gray thank you so much my name is Carmela boin thank you everyone so much and it's to your summit thanks for coming [Music] [Music]
• 146:30 - 147:00 [Music] oh yeah look at this all right I've listened to hundreds and hundreds of of pitches here at web Summit and somewhere amazing and somewhere well not amazing but one thing I know is that pitching is
• 147:00 - 147:30 definitely an art form an art form that can be studied and learned ahead of our pitch finals right here on Center Stage it's time to hear from some of the experts on the dos and don'ts of delivering the perfect pitch please welcome back to lead this one TV host and our very own host of websummit laa vente chatting to people who know how to pitch and raise millions of dollars from investors the founder of rappy and yuno Juan Pablo Ortega
• 147:30 - 148:00 fireworks AI founder and CEO lyncha and to share the secret of how he won last year's pitch final right here on Center Stage co-founder of Inspira anre [Music] Ferrera so we did the unthinkable now we have the winning for just want to see more cash the last two years has definitely been a very aggressive not all startups will
• 148:00 - 148:30 succeed this idea that should be living in how do you break through the noise in the fight for funding [Music]
• 148:30 - 149:00 hello guys such a pleasure sharing this stage with you welcome to web Summit um so I love the name of this panel for starters how to fix your shitty pitch which means there is hope for it so uh I want to start with Juan Pablo you are a multiple founder you've had to pitch to different companies to different investors several times what did you do right for Ry and for youo
• 149:00 - 149:30 well number one is is execution of the company I think the pitch is you could be the easiest part um but look you first of all need to understand your audience I think this is extremely important the way you pitch to an investor or a customer is completely different so you may have to do multiple pitch and it's going to change um depending on who you're pitching the second part I think is super important is that the first 10 20 seconds are the most important you need to grab people's
• 149:30 - 150:00 attention so that first part connecting to the audience that you're peaching maybe sharing a story sharing something that they can connect and they can relate to it's extremely important and then finally you have to keep it sure if you give them too much information if you try to come to explain really complex things you're you're going to lose the audience um so great beginning then not putting too much information going to a point and at the end closing with a clear um call to action or
• 150:00 - 150:30 something so I can remember the pitch that I just hear I think those are the most important ones that's a very good formula I'm going to try it uh Enrique you won the pitch competition here on this very stage last year so first of all I want to know how has that been and then I would ask you what what advice do you have for those finalists that are actually listening to us backstage right uh first of all it feels so special to be back here uh amazing amazing and just
• 150:30 - 151:00 to compliment what Juan was saying uh for me I think that the starting is very important right you have to come out strong and you know for us last year I don't know if many people remember but uh we made an illusion to how Brazil is five-time World Cup champions in football and then the bureaucracy and legal problems are we're number one as well um that for us was really strong and you know connected with the whole audience um and for us after the event after competition um it was you know um incredible incredible we've been
• 151:00 - 151:30 we had been talking to investors and uh partners and clients and then after that uh when we just you know everything moved so much faster um was incredible you know uh the team doubled number of clients doubled and you know absolutely amazing outstanding great and what advice would you give for the pitch finalist that that are backstage like you were a year ago yeah so um again I believe really connecting and making it simple do not over complicate things uh
• 151:30 - 152:00 if it's a a real problem a real pain um and you go specifically to the point and make something very pragmatical and example uh it makes a lot of sense and then go to your strong points you know where is the strongest Parts uh of your pitch and try to connect as much as possible with the audience our solution uh is a little bit of vertical you know in the Lego Space uh not everybody is familiar with that uh but once we you know uh make strong introdution um introduction and make uh you know uh a
• 152:00 - 152:30 strong compelling examples uh throughout the presentation I think it uh captured the attention of from everybody so connecting with your audience is very important and realizing who you're speaking to Lynn would you agree with those two advises I definitely think those are important aspects but I will also suggest you to pick a good company name as a starter it sounds like a joke who cares about the name at the end it's a name
• 152:30 - 153:00 but the process of thinking about that is actually reflection of what's your ambitious vision and the mission of your company how does that reflect in you thinking about the business plan and why you why you will win the market why you are unique and why now at the end you know you need get to the bottom of this uh and for example when we started we think about our name actually spent a lot of time think about our name and we have been building
• 153:00 - 153:30 pytorch as the AI framework in the AI Marketplace uh for 5 years and we want as kind of we want to make AI extremely accessible to all developers and Enterprises across the industry Empower this air first move so as as pie torch is a torch holding the flame and we want to be we want that AI flame to be everywhere so that's why we name our company fireworks so the
• 153:30 - 154:00 process of explaining the company name is a process of explaining our vision and Mission To The Future so I feel like that is a very important um starting point for the pitch and I think something that I wanted to add to that uh you have to make sure your name is kind of mean the same meaning in different languages so in RI uh once we went to the US to do a pitch and people thought the company names was rapy which wasn't intended so you have to make sure
• 154:00 - 154:30 that the name doesn't have different meanings or it sounds weird in different languages and can can ium jump in of course please for us as well uh when you think about the legal uh landscape is a little bit more traditional and so on and for us the name inpa is something to inspire different things and Inspire Innovation and something completely off the usual what you know someone from the legal environment would expect so that's a little bit towards that to make something you know that catches people's
• 154:30 - 155:00 attention yeah definitely and that's also like the great start of a conversation of a pitch right as Lyn was saying that you could start off with explaining why did you choose this name what does it mean for you as a company what's it mean as a story but would you check it in every language possible or like Which languages would you check well for yo we did everything because we when we started yo we knew it was going to be a global company so we did kind of the main ones like Japanese Chinese Portuguese English Spanish but I think the more you check the better um so yeah
• 155:00 - 155:30 I it depends also what you're going to operate if you're going to operate only in Latin America shouldn't worry about I think the basics Portuguese English and Spanish um are important uh but if you're building a truly global company checking the the main ones will be super important so I imagine that you've got you guys have had a lot of experiences pitching and also hearing other people pitch what were the best things that
• 155:30 - 156:00 you've heard people pitching or you yourselves have had the experience of pitching like good experiences first we'll get to the bad ones in a bit you want to I think the one that I always going to remember is Enrique from last year I still remember that big Brazilian FL black um so think if you think about the best pictures are the ones that start something that you can always remember and it could be a story remember one time um I was hearing a a
• 156:00 - 156:30 pitch from a from a startup it was something really like parking and I remember like that was such a big problem and when he explained the situation like right away I was super connected because I I have this problem so I think that's when you when you get the the first 10 20 seconds and and you're able to relate to it I will always remain remember that pitch and uh when Pablo has been a judge for pitch competitions in web Summit several times you've heard 100,000 pitches In This Very stage so you definitely know what
• 156:30 - 157:00 you're talking about cuz the connection if it happens it happens if not it's 3 minutes of kind of yeah just wait and we get an iPad and if you lose focus you're going to start playing with the iPad that's what happens get distracted easily instantly what about you Lynn yeah so I feel like there's early stage seed level there's growth stage like growing the business level um investment and if you think
• 157:00 - 157:30 about Investors angle right so they're going to put in money and they would expect returns and I would say early stage and late stage are complete different because early stage there's nothing there's no business it's really hard to predict what's going to happen and they're really bad down people and and uh you need to show why you unique and I have been talking with uh many early stage Founders and the the the ideas they
• 157:30 - 158:00 share me I feel most excited about other ideas that they show they have the unique Insight nobody else and that's the most inting part is is kind of hey this unique combination of technical business voids and gaps in the market um and that's not conventional mhm and that creates disruption and then the pedigree of those Founders they have the experience they have the depth uh and
• 158:00 - 158:30 they have the resource to make that happen and those are the areas those are the companies that worth betting on for early stage and for late stage is grow stage is very clear you're going to show business metrics you're going to show you have the adoption you have the traction you have the mo that to not be disrupted by other people so I I think that I I think for a late stage I would say you know there you don't even need a pitch if your business is growing really
• 158:30 - 159:00 well up and right investors will be seeking you not the other way very good Enrique yeah I think in in the end of the day it's people we're talking to to people so in the end is how you connect to those people you know and um you know being vulnerable generates vulner ability right so uh if you get to that safe place where you can exchange experiences and and actually go a deep level in terms of uh transparency in connection uh I think that can go a
• 159:00 - 159:30 very very long way it is but you need to get to that deeper level in order to achieve that um that place just so we feel comfortable and you can also exchange that and not every time you have that you don't always have that time you don't always have that opportunity yeah how do you build that in little time yeah I mean it's um our experience is uh literally being out there and and open really because then when you tell your story someone will
• 159:30 - 160:00 relate you know because uh in the end of the day we're talking about real problems real pains and whenever we're pitching we're actually connecting to people uh who have experienced those those pains and I think this is where knowing your audience is extremely important because if you're pitching a lawyer for your startup um if you're pitching an investor then the way you hook them is completely different because with the lawyer and with that kind of a specific so for us is it could be the head of payments so when you're pitching the head of payments you have
• 160:00 - 160:30 to uh go deep technical tell him things that shows that we know what we're talking about when you're going to an investor most investors have no idea of payments they hear about it but they are normal consumers so you go more like hey have you ever tried to pay and your car gets declined oh yeah you don't tell that to the payment person because the payment person is always struggling to accept all the credit cards so understanding that the audience could completely change how you create that hook to start the conversation because
• 160:30 - 161:00 in the end if you I think we'll get to that a little bit later but in the end is uh if you try to explain something very complex and for a long time the attention span is every day less right so um you got to do it fast you got to connect fast and keep going from there right and keep those different narratives toward whoever it is that you're talking to so they you still make it relatable to each different person and Attention Center right definitely yeah should we talk about the bad
• 161:00 - 161:30 experiences like the bad experiences of hearing someone pitch or yourselves while pitching just uh maybe in the beginning or maybe talking too deeply on things that you shouldn't talk or for too long or too difficultly have you had those experiences or seen it happen I think we we all had I think one did I remember super clearly um it was a biotech startup and they were trying to
• 161:30 - 162:00 explain this extremely complex uh system and I remember like they started with this super complex things so like first 20 seconds was already like super lost and as they kept going it got even more complex and you were like please like I feel like in Biology class like I definitely don't want to listen to this and it it seems like at some point they were're going to get to the point like I was going to be able to understand so I just kept trying to pay attention but at the end yeah it never it never happened I came I was like super confused at the end and like completely lost my
• 162:00 - 162:30 attention so I think that was one that I really remember like when you watch a movie and you go no they're going somewhere I think this is going somewhere I'm going to stay until the end I will understand and then just credits roll up and you're like nope 100% yeah it's yeah the movie is a lot longer about the pitch tends to be more by same thing defin the the ones that you feel lost in the beginning and even more loss and in in the end is uh the
• 162:30 - 163:00 ones that you try to interrupt in the middle say hold on come back let let's do this again uh because uh you know there are many complex problems out there and trying to explain the them is can can get really hard um but um it is if you don't have that strong beginning and explain really simply how that problem is works and affects people's lives um that can be really challenging to pick up in the end and you know uh really connect and understand really
• 163:00 - 163:30 100% yeah I have heard many ideas I think the the challenging one that may not land well uh one is the tech technicality part of how you frame uh your story but most importantly is not answering question question why you why now why you asking why you so unique not just on the technicality side but also on the business marketing side like why this
• 163:30 - 164:00 particular solution that you're building is going to disrupt it's going to create 10x it's going to be so different from what is already existing in the market and how it's going to f in AV void that have a huge time and why now is are you two ahead of the curve where this idea is great but there's no way to implement that and realize that in in a practice uh manner so if pitch that cannot reflect these two and answer these two in a very succinct way that just means
• 164:00 - 164:30 um maybe it's not the right timing or maybe you're on the right team to be backed by uh investors uh or maybe the business has uh business plan has been has not been thought out um very clearly or there's just not enough depth to create a business uh in that space so I think I I don't think about the pitch as a pitch by itself a pitch is really a reflection of the depth of the thinking
• 164:30 - 165:00 to create a new business it's just kind of part of integral process and uh and it's it's a reflection uh of of the whole entire uh entire thing so so it's it's not a speech context or or anything in that sort and uh our last question is have you ever used generative AI to help you create parts or your pitch in any ways
• 165:00 - 165:30 definitely and I think a AI is extremely helpful for that part on how to connect with the audience um so sometimes you have to explain really complex things and you run out of ideas but you can chpt or CLA or any or Google Gemini and they're actually really good like the models if you give the model context they are really good at giving you uh some ideas so I think the important part is that you have to be extremely precise so like I'm pitching to an investor this investor normally invests his X Y C or
• 165:30 - 166:00 he invests generally uh I'm trying to explain how the credit card system works and how increasing approval rates happens XY and C give me examples for a investor give me an example for a 17year old give me an example for a 10year oldold and when you get all of these examples you can put them together and I think it's extremely helpful and before it used to be only kind of the how do you the P or how do you sometimes you have maybe 2 minutes 5 minutes and it
• 166:00 - 166:30 can help you condense into a shorter pitch but also you have products like gamma that you can just give them the kind of the pitch and it will create beautiful slides with AI generated images with the key points so to do a pit today you don't even have to like need need a designer or have to open PowerPoint you can just go to GMA well chat GPT create the pitch for the specific audience then you copy paste that into gamma gamma creates the number of slides that you want and you're like
• 166:30 - 167:00 completely done Lyn I'm very excited to hear your answer on this one I probably would never use J AI for a pitch not actually J AI we have a lot of companies and customers running on top of us building great applications and products I I believing that uh I have seen jna company actually disrupt the powerpointing space because it's all about storytelling but for me I
• 167:00 - 167:30 feel this is a very important part of the business process and I want I want it to reflect me not a a tool that is more General design for everybody so uh so I really want that to be unique and special and fully enable and empower the depth of my thinking uh reflecting uh in front of important
• 167:30 - 168:00 people I want to talk to um and and I feel that's also very important skill set for for all founders because I mean pitching to investor is not uh you don't do that every day you just do that every multiple once in every year or multiple years but often time to pitch to customers you to pitch to your candidates executive hires Engineers um and it's all about storytelling it's all about how people can relate to story
• 168:00 - 168:30 relate to a mission and join you um you know join you whether be on your board or join you in your team um and be your partner and so on so and kind of buy your product this way of expressing why this is so unique why they should should uh invest their resource uh into this company is is kind of just it's a critical skill set of a of a Founder so
• 168:30 - 169:00 I I think yeah I I personally probably would not use gni tools but there are many great geni tools to to help us become a better storytellers I think it's definitely a starting point right uh to get you understand a little bit how the storytelling can go uh but if you truly deeply understand that pain and you lived it yourself that's usually way easier to just do a good very good storytelling uh but personally for me I I'm very bad with visuals and designs
• 169:00 - 169:30 and so on so for me that's a that's a good plus and yeah definitely using it um but just to make clear the Brazilian flag in World Cup from LA from last year's pitch wasn't G by the way it was all you know our own creativity uh but yeah definitely think it can be very helpful yeah I'm pretty sure you askp like how can I open my presentation okay it's okay uh we still have two more minutes so any final notes advice on like we're just about to have the final pitch
• 169:30 - 170:00 finals final notes final tips final advice last year was super nervous back there you know and up to now it's you've practiced uh these guys have been doing an amazing job and now is just you know come out here and finish off with this great presentation uh and really being comfortable confident and you know when the when the atten energy goes with attention flows right so yeah yeah 100% yeah I think when I started I
• 170:00 - 170:30 underestimated how powerful it is to articulate the mission you're after uh so it took me a while to to Really polish that part because that's a critical part of building up the company rallying people people around you whether it's your team it's your customers it's the partners investors you bring alongside with you in this journey so I think that's kind
• 170:30 - 171:00 of very very important and uh if you're thinking about starting company definitely think about what what is our mission it shouldn't be small it should be very very big to wor you spend your lifetime uh lifetime investment um into into this yeah I think for me you get super nervous uh I think the first time that I came into Stage that was the worst part because you practice for a while you try many different things and like you come out and you see everyone you're like oh my God I'm freaking out and and you start kind of double guessing yourself
• 171:00 - 171:30 uh for me is breeding like before I go I just do three deep breaths and it helps you relax but um I think tip number one is as soon as you start getting that you have to calm calm your mind and and let it flow I think you're the experts like everyone here have been practicing for many days many months many years so trust yourself and push through it it's a amazing opportunity okay thank you guys so much it was a pleasure sharing this stage
• 171:30 - 172:00 with you thank you for all your valuable tips [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]
• 172:00 - 172:30 [Music] [Music] [Music]
• 172:30 - 173:00 who all right here we go what everyone's waiting for who is going to be crowned web Summits 2024 pitch Champion that's what we're going to find out today right now it's time for the finalist of the greatest startup competition in the world to step foot on Center Stage again for one final battle over the past two days over 105 of the most exciting startups at web Summit have pitched across four stages here in the arena
• 173:00 - 173:30 first on our pitch stages during the group rounds and then here on Center Stage last night in our semifinal rounds and now today only three remain to give you an idea how big this is we start with over 2700 startups this year our judges cut that down to five and then down again to 10 last night and today we have the top three so each startup will pitch for three minutes Follow by a 3 minute Q&A from our judging panel and then the winner will be announced here
• 173:30 - 174:00 at 2:45 p.m. today playing a big role in deciding who the winner will be is our panel of three top level judges please welcome to the stage Edith young General partner at race capital and early stage toan Valley DC fund Juan Pablo foro is back the founder of rppi and yuno and Caitlyn Holloway an early stage investor and co-founder of 776 come on [Music]
• 174:00 - 174:30 [Music] out all right thank you I'm going to sit down good to see you one Pablo I haven't been here for a while all right judges thank you so much for being with us uh for this big moment these three judges won't be alone though joining them will be you the audience you guys are the fourth judge which means you can vote for your favorite startup via the websummit mobile app
• 174:30 - 175:00 your votes will actually count for 25% of the total voting after all the pitches are finished you can vote by clicking on your profile in the uh top left corner of your screen I think it's up there on the thing so you can see it from there you will see an option called pitch final which is where you will submit your vote at the end of the session voting will remain open for only 15 minutes so vote right away if you want to see your favorite startup win get ready all right so I think it's time
• 175:00 - 175:30 we kick this all off how's everybody feeling Kaitlin so excited so excited how about you Edith I'm pumped Pumped and while Pablo super happy super happy okay great all right first up the company's called gov GPT the startup which makes computer vision and sensory awareness AI vests vests which uh respond to ambient threats for Police and Fire come on
• 175:30 - 176:00 [Music] out hello my name is rajaner and I am the CEO of government GPT I'm here from Mountain View California I'm a former patent attorney I'm also a former inventor and a former CEO of a venture back company I raised a seed round series a series B before a sale to
• 176:00 - 176:30 Google in 2011 uh and I am now building my company today so what company are we building here is we are building uh an Revolution to bodyw warn cameras so these body warn cameras today are a big business axon which makes this camera is used by 94% of police departments in America it's gone from being a$1 billion company to$ 46 billion company in just 66 or seven years and this camera was designed to be an optional device for police
• 176:30 - 177:00 departments where you can add it to a tactical vest we've taken that concept and we've merged the body warn camera into the tactical vest so our tactical vest this is an actual police vest our partner is blower which makes 20% of all vests in America this is a a actual blower vest with cameras on the front and cameras in the back so it is recording 360° around me right now and it's not just the recording vest Beyond being a recording vest this has haptic
• 177:00 - 177:30 actuators on the front and the back and these haptic actuators will vibrate when it detects the threat so for example we have here a technology that's based on uh jetsen Orin which basically we've built the world's fastest threat detection model on the edge of a of of a of a human body that can detect threats so someone comes behind me with a knife right now it will vibrate and I can turn around and face them this is an important thing right now especially in
• 177:30 - 178:00 the last two years we've seen major terrorist attacks across the world in Israel there was an attack on a caboots in the United States in Butler Pennsylvania there was an attack on our president uh Trump and what happens is in those attacks the security guards that are in the middle so in the kaboot they had no idea that there are Shooters on the edge the police that were in the building where the shooter went upstairs had no idea that there was a shooter upstairs and it took too long for them to get there with our system a
• 178:00 - 178:30 stationary camera or a drone that's looking at all the rooftops would have seen that happen just like you can with the Google home nest camera and it would vibrate the vest when it vibrates the vest I would be able to look at my phone and see a live video feed with directions of where the shooter is what kind of ammunition and what kinds of things are happening and the security guards would be able to save lives so join us today to help the world creep safer by making the right decision at the right time and revolutionizing
• 178:30 - 179:00 Public Safety okay judges anybody have any questions for gov GPD I have a quick question you provide the software and the hardware or only the software so the money is really in the evidence management so the way the current system works is body cameras are licensed for $2,500 a year you don't buy them anymore we're transforming tactical vests into subscriptions so you pay $99
• 179:00 - 179:30 to $299 a month for a tactical vest solution and this becomes a subscription to manage your evidence in the cloud and that cloud management so they can be produced in litigation and used in in holding people accountable or or showing the evidence where it's necessary is going to be where the money is for us got it thank you and and Raj have you launched it already and if so who are using it yeah so we're are self-funded I funded this myself with over a million dollars I'm investing 40 to $80,000 my
• 179:30 - 180:00 own money in the business I have uh launched it with pilot customers this is a life-saving device so in order to actually be able to save lives we don't want to make sure it's perfect before it's launched it has to be designed for manufacturability we still need to do a lot more testing in the next 6 to 12 months so we're looking to raise $2 million on a $10 million post valuation with a lead investor who could get us to the next stage who has a follow-on capacity to that stage we have lots of angels we have lots of followon lead uh
• 180:00 - 180:30 investors already lined up for us as well great you know I I appreciate very much what you're building my adopted little brother is a uh he's a sheriff down in Fresno so thank you for service I care very much about keeping that kid alive uh for a variety of reasons but my my concern here is is human error and so the Assumption and and please tell me if I'm wrong is that this is battery operated right and so how do we charge this so my my concern would be working in the back office who is responsible
• 180:30 - 181:00 for charging these units how do we get them back up and running to make sure and ensure that all of our our folks out there that are out there on the front lines are are charged up and ready to go yeah so we have when you take the body camera off today you're taking the battery off when you take our system off you're hot swapping the battery and the hard drive separately so our hard drive and battery is separately from charge SGA the other is you can distribute the battery across the vest so in military context there are vest that actually charge other devices so there's no limitation in how much real estate you
• 181:00 - 181:30 have on the vest to create a full charge police officers love this we have hundreds of police officers we' validated the concept with we have 12 Police Department Pilots right now with major police Chiefs Across America who are validating testing using this in the field right now and so we are are very confident of that solution it's not just for police though it's also for the public the public wants accountability they want to be able to make sure the police are are you know catching the right criminals the evidence that's
• 181:30 - 182:00 being captured behind you is really important as well today that's not captured so there's a huge opportunity to improve that way too thank you excellent all right round of applause for gov GPT thank you Raj all right our second finalist is called intuitivo the all-in-one digital assessment platform that is already improving the prct productivity of more than 35,000 teachers and the education
• 182:00 - 182:30 of over 300,000 students come on [Music] [Applause] [Music] out hi everyone I hope you're doing well I'm here to talk to you about the problem that we have in society right now which is the fact that our children's education is at risk there are 85 million teachers in
• 182:30 - 183:00 the world but 49 million of them will leave the workforce by 2030 creating a huge labor shortage which is putting at risk the education of our next Generations and these teachers they need to be replaced but the reality is that no one wants to become a teacher anymore and no wonder teachers don't get paid enough they work too much and just 46% of their time is spent actually teaching their students the rest of their time is spent doing administrative repetitive tasks which are not adding value and
• 183:00 - 183:30 could be automated and this includes over one and a half months a year creating and Grading assessments for their students and we saw this happening with teachers in our own families so we decided to make a change we made it our mission to help teachers become more productive so that they can f focus on their true purpose teaching my name is Joan I'm co-founder and CEO at intuitiv and we're an all in- one web platform that helps teachers with the creation and Grading of tests and exercises saving them over 40% of
• 183:30 - 184:00 the time that they used to spend in the process before with intivo teachers can find ready to use content created by other teachers from all over the country or create their own from our wide range of options keeping everything organized in a centralized database that they can easily share with their colleagues finally they can build engaging assessments for their students which are automatically graded and give personalized feedback and our business model is very simple we charge schools a monthly subscription of 5 per teacher and to
• 184:00 - 184:30 fuel our school's growth we have a premium model for individual teachers and we help governments with the delivery of national exams and actually the Portuguese national exams are already being digitized and the government chose our platform to do this of course this means an important contract for us but most importantly this means that we have the best marketing possible as every single student in Portugal will use the platform eventually on top of that in under two years we've grown our users by over 80
• 184:30 - 185:00 times from about 500 teachers to over 40,000 teachers using the platform and we've gone from zero to over €300,000 in annual recurring revenues the moment is now schools are in the are in the process of digitization all over the world creating an obtainable Market opportunity for assessment softwares of over 5 billion per year we're already backed by some leading VCS and over the next two years we want to reach 1 million in ARR to expand to New Markets continue improving
• 185:00 - 185:30 our products including we AI features and to hit the 200k users Mark so join intivo if you want to help save our education system thank you very much amazing amazing all right judges Caitlin maybe we start with you this time perfect well first of all uh I started my career as a first and second grade teacher and I was raised by public Educators so I I very much feel the pain uh myself which is helpful but I'm curious I I care a lot about founder
• 185:30 - 186:00 product fit why are you the one to solve this problem and why are you going to spend the rest of your life doing it in reality the co-founders we're three originally two of them not me actually their mothers are teachers and so they saw the pain happening with their own mothers for example grading Assessments in the weekend losing a lot of time in these tasks that could be automated uh and they decided to create the platform and I joined but as soon as I joined I saw an opportunity to make a huge difference in such an important uh
• 186:00 - 186:30 industry and so I felt in love with it yeah thank you sounds like you have a lot of fan in the crowd I'm in Portugal you know um so what is your vision you're going to start and launch in Portugal first and but there are what is going to be the next and sort of like your big Vision where you going to go in the world of course so we want to go all over the world of course but we want to take it step by step of course starting
• 186:30 - 187:00 in Portugal is a good testing Market but we want to go outside and that's one of the first things that we're going to do in 2025 uh not globally at once of course we're going to start going Market by market I think it's going to take a lot of years and not only want to enter new markets but also to create new modules in our platform and build kind of an ecosystem for teachers to use and to spend less time doing repetitive tasks in school yeah thank you how is AI helping you build this like have the latest model helping you do things
• 187:00 - 187:30 faster do things better can you tell me a little bit more on that AI is actually doing nothing in our in our product right now we want to add it as soon as soon as 2025 to do a lot of things yeah screw those robots boo AI we we don't want to add AI just to add AI of course we want to add AI if it adds value to the teacher and so we're seeing a couple of things that we think really will help the teachers for example automatically scanning a PDF or
• 187:30 - 188:00 a word and making it into a digital assessment automatically creating assessments for example if a teacher wants to create an assessment on the topic of Portugal they will ask for it and it will it will give you some exercises and also automatic grading that we don't do for text answers so like big answers we don't do it uh and at least we want to give a teacher an idea of what we believe could be a right gr but we always believe that the teacher himself should uh see uh the the
• 188:00 - 188:30 assessment yeah perfect thank you awesome Round of Applause thank you intu Jo awesome all right and last but not least the final startup is called Scouts and Antonio in his startup is on a mission to connect athletes with college and pro teams through Visual scouting and datadriven recruiting come on out
• 188:30 - 189:00 [Applause] [Music] Scouts meet miles a high school senior who dreams of playing college basketball but just like 90% of most high school athletes he doesn't get a college scholarship however miles soon realized that there are thousands of colleges and universities that offer athletic scholarship so what does he do reach out to schools
• 189:00 - 189:30 himself miles sends hundreds of cold emails just to get a scholar scholarship you see the talent is there but he's unsuccessful in breaking into the market and it's not just happening to high school athletes like miles it's also happening to to college transfers and other pro athletes who often lack the visibility and connections to get to the next level and how do I know this because I lived it my name is Antonio deina I'm the CEO and founder of Scouts
• 189:30 - 190:00 and having living miles Journey myself is why I created this platform so a little bit about me I was once a college basketball player and a pro athlete I know I gained a little weight guys it happens but just like most athletes I too had zero idea how to start my recruiting process or where to begin I got my first college scholarship from sending hundreds of cold emails just like this and I got my first pro contract from this exact Facebook DM that I sent to a coach right here in Portugal and here's what I learned about
• 190:00 - 190:30 the process out of the 3,000 college coaches in programs 80% of them don't have the budget to recruit Nationwide and with the international market growing it's making it harder for them to even recruit International Talent so Scouts is solving this problem Scouts is the sports recruiting platform that connects athletes and coaches to automate Sports recruiting so essentially we're like a virtual Scout for coaches and a virtual sports agent for the athletes right but let's just take away the athlete for a second we help coaches find Qualified
• 190:30 - 191:00 players from prev vetting them and matching them with the right fit saving them time and money so since our launch in 2022 we've generate over $1.3 million in total revenue to date scouting and recruiting for professional and college programs all around the world but this isn't the most scalable option right and just like Airbnb Uber we did some unscalable things to start our journey so this year we launched our MVP in the market and are currently generating around $30,000
• 191:00 - 191:30 of monthly recurring Revenue to date we have over 10,000 athletes on our platform and have successfully matched them with 120 teams all around the countries all around the world actually we also have a successful partnership with two NBA g-league teams today our team is small and lean together we have over 10 years of experience in college coaching and recruiting professional coaching and recruiting and the entire recruiting process in general so again we are solving the
• 191:30 - 192:00 problem millions of athletes face and helping thousands of coaches solve their problem and find their perfect players in college and pro recruiting and you can follow us on our journey as we become the number one sports recruiting platform in the world thank you all right great all right judges Edith let's start with you do you have a questions here for Antonio um in the next you know 12 months or so what is your main goal in terms of revenues um number of athletes signed up and also like call um
• 192:00 - 192:30 recruiters sign up right that's a great question so the next 12 months my my plan is to fully launch into the college market so right now most of the revenue you're seeing is only in the pro market that leaves so much potential to get into the college space and start you know the bigger Market if you must say so my goal for the next 12 months is get into the college Market winning basketball you know Jeff Basil's actually said it best you know he before he even started anything he said I'm going to sell everything in the world but first i'm going to be the best book seller for me I want to be the best basketball recruiting platform before I
• 192:30 - 193:00 even launch any other sports so that's my that's my priority awesome great one Pablo so do you normally acquire users through signing the different colleges or do you have more of a kind of per athlete acquisition yeah yeah yeah it's mainly per athlete so athletes pay subscriptions on our platform and so do the coaches so it's more like a a dual-sided Marketplace if you must ask so both are paying subscriptions to get access to each other got it thank you that makes a lot of sense and I I love
• 193:00 - 193:30 that you included a team slide team is very important to me so it looks like you're you're a small team for Mighty folks yeah with this new capital how would you expand your team oh man that's a great question too you guys are asking great questions but um but yeah so me I don't pretend to know it all you know as a as a solo founder I really don't pretend to know it all so for me bringing the right technical talent that means you know as being a non-technical Founder I'm pretty sure some of our Founders feel that pain being non-technical is very very hard to build so bringing the right you know technical
• 193:30 - 194:00 talent and just pushing the pushing a path forward for product development that's usually what the funding is going to go for beautiful thank you thanks awesome thank you Antonio Round of Applause Scout all right let's give a round of applause for all the final today they were all incredible very very good all right a quick reminder now that it's time to have your say on who do you think should be crowned a pitch champion of web Summit 2024 the polls will remain open for 15 minutes so make sure you
• 194:00 - 194:30 cast your vote but first judges let's hear a little bit of insight from you Caitlyn what did you think of all three pitches and did any one of them stand out to you more than the other this is incredible I know that the funnel was massive how many pitches came through the top well there were over almost 3,000 startups and then we Whittle down to 100 and then there were 10 yesterday and now there are three I I mean obviously these are the top three uh absolutely phenomenal all three and for very different reasons um I'm really going to have to deliberate on this not one is jumping out yet all three of them
• 194:30 - 195:00 are pulling at my heartstrings and my purse strings great great awesome awesome how about you Edith did any one of the uh pitches stand out to you and why um I think all three are amazing amazing Founders but I do have a few things that I want to sort of remind especially for the founders in the room and I mentioned in the experience stage a couple days ago um as this is only 3 minutes there's not a whole lot of time for you to address everything um I really really love uh Scouts who like sort of talk about the personal story
• 195:00 - 195:30 really Quant qualify why he's doing this that's why Caitlyn sort of asked our second founder hey what qualify you to do that um at the same time I want to remind everybody a few things I it's it's great being transparent but don't necessarily name the valuation of what you're looking for sometimes at lead investor ourself you you don't want to sort of take that away from us we may give you a higher valuation is so don't do that um couple other thing I think
• 195:30 - 196:00 you know some of our Founders did really really well which is like like if you already have traction particular a user base or Revenue I may even like talk about that in front soort of show off the fact that you have already launch and ATT traction have customers um since you only have 3 minutes you wanted to grab everybody attention to make sure that that's why I'm standing on this stage um anyway excellent excellent jobs and I'm sure all our Founders will go
• 196:00 - 196:30 really really far great great awesome ju Pablo did anybody follow your advice that you uh gave out before we we did this yeah some of them did some of them don't and I I think I got lot in in some of them uh it was really cool that they are all solving real issues uh all of them are going going after things that are actually uh hurting them and hurting people so I think that's pretty cool and yeah the part of the the product uh the founder market Fe is extremely important I think people understand how um how important it is that you have an edge
• 196:30 - 197:00 compared to a rest so I think we saw some of them in some of the companies um showing traction I think it was really cool that some of the companies it was clear that are doing something good and there are a point where uh the money can help them scale um but yeah pretty it's going to be a hard decision going to be a hard decision I think so yeah okay so the judges scores will now be collected and counted as will your audience uh slido vote the winner of pitch will be announced here on Center Stage exactly
• 197:00 - 197:30 2:45 p.m. so be sure to come back for the big reveal thank you all very much and we'll see you later thank you to the judges too [Music] [Music] [Music]
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• 264:00 - 264:30 please welcome to the stage your host Laura vente what you we suage all right welcome back and I can't believe that this is the final afternoon of web Summit 2024 I'm your host laen and I've had an incredible week here in
• 264:30 - 265:00 Lisbon the sights and sounds of Lisbon during night Summit is one of the reasons that I cannot wait to be back in Lisbon here next year but now for this afternoon we'll be back to back with Incredible sessions as we count down to the final talk here and also find out which of the three startups finalists will win pitch 2024 websummit is the meeting place for the leaders of today and tomorrow so make sure you keep using
• 265:00 - 265:30 the app and the WhatsApp groups to keep making meaningful connections right up until the very end of the event we have a wonderful final afternoon in store we have legendary singer IM Heap the European e-commerce giant vintage and for our grand finale the Portuguese Superstar hubing Gs are you guys ready so let's get into it being here in Portugal I can see that the connection with Brazil goes a lot deeper than just
• 265:30 - 266:00 our language and that the importance of innovation and technology is shaping economic growth is also very important to both so our next speaker will discuss how Portugal specifically is growing through Innovation and technology and it is my great honor to introduce to you the minister of economy from the government of Portugal Pedro Hayes [Applause] [Music]
• 266:00 - 266:30 dear friends dear guests dear inviters humankind and the planet face serious Global challenges that require bold Global
• 266:30 - 267:00 responses extreme events water and food security large scale displacement social disparities economic inequality political unrest cyber security threats ethical questions regarding technology dependency and data
• 267:00 - 267:30 protection concerns about the future of work and its social impact among others that's why our era requires that we stand together up to the generations that preceded us it's a huge responsibility but it's also an achievable
• 267:30 - 268:00 one if tackled together we must all of us and now do a profound reassessment of global priorities agenda and values we need an urgent and basically call to action an urgent one there is a clear need for more
• 268:00 - 268:30 International cooperation collaborative approach innovative solutions and robust policies supported by strong budgets and resources we must be bold as well as responsible this requires all of us to face a
• 268:30 - 269:00 sustainability as the prime and ultimate criteria for development a sense of urgency or even emergency a perception of mutual dependency which can be transformed into our strength a way out and a way ahead once and for all we must all articulate a planetary
• 269:00 - 269:30 response we must all face the huge responsibility ahead we must all contribute in indvidually institutionally nationally regionally worldwide to a different present and much better future dear friends Portugal and the Portuguese economy wants to stand up to
• 269:30 - 270:00 this challenge basically we are saying count us in by acting as a a strategic platform in connecting the world a true Gateway into Europe into Africa into the Americas namely through the Portuguese speaking countries and our diaspora by investing in sustainable
• 270:00 - 270:30 state-ofthe-art infrastructures Logistics as well as Communications by Leading The Way on renewable energy in wind in solar in hydro and soon to be in offshore Renewables both in production distribution and in Smart Storage with a fit to Leverage The Greening of our
• 270:30 - 271:00 industry from Mobility to Green hydrogen from Green steel to Smart Storage and thermal batteries from recycling to Circular economy we also want to kick the Blu our economy from aquaculture to new Pharmaceuticals and cosmetics from Blue economic R&D to retrofitting of
• 271:00 - 271:30 shipping we want to help a sustainable ecosystem in our economy by accelerating in R preneurs startups smes and future unicorns that are among you we want to help you all to serve and to ride the wave of the future the wave of innovation whether we are talking about
• 271:30 - 272:00 shared service centers or data centers Hospitality or ecotourism Resorts creative Industries or Advanced agriculture automobile Aeronautics or space we want to build it up with more it Ai and more clouds on top of all this Portugal stands for safety for quality of life and in in a
• 272:00 - 272:30 volatile world this is no small achievement we offer an affordable way of life as well as a top quality value proposition we are a multilingual melt poot as well as a peaceful heaven we feel I guess you feel our good vibe uh but we remain stable with
• 272:30 - 273:00 Tranquility additionally please have it clear that our government stands strongly for for an open economy as the key to the Future respects the private sector as the main engine of growth prioritize foreign direct investment as a key asset for accelerating our economy
• 273:00 - 273:30 considers tax reduction and agile licensing as the core passport for new investment and certainly we much welcome your startup Community your VC and private Equity ecosystem your business angels and institutional investors communities as our partners for growth and for Value
• 273:30 - 274:00 creation dear friends I'm very pleased to announce here and today the commitment of the Portuguese government to create a new deep Tech fund of 100 million in Portugal in order to accelerate your disruptive technological innovation with a public
• 274:00 - 274:30 endowment of 50 million EUR and co-investment with additional institutional funds for the remaining stake of the fund the this new deep Tech fund will be launched no later than the first quarter of 25 as it's used to say we are putting our money where our Mouse is additionally we will also commit
• 274:30 - 275:00 another 10 million on ignition funds and on vouches that are to be granted for your startups dealing with deep Tech and sustainability models in order to support your applications for the European Innovation Council accelerator for deep Tech dear friends we believe it is possible we believe it's urgent we
• 275:00 - 275:30 believe it's achievable we believe it's time to go faster and go beyond we do believe it's worth to start creating a much better world we do believe it's time to start making it happen once and for all immediately together with full steam
• 275:30 - 276:00 ahead my friends you are all always most welcome to come back to Portugal to invest in Portugal to live in Portugal basically you are all welcome to be with us and Among Us for as long as you want for whatever way you wish but Mo most of all we want you to
• 276:00 - 276:30 become one of us for good for life for the future for Wells creation right now right here starting at web Summit thank you all for committing to Portugal thank you all for coming to Portugal thank you web summited for what you are doing for
• 276:30 - 277:00 Portugal good luck everybody it's possible let's go for it together [Applause] [Music]
• 277:00 - 277:30 [Music] the next chapter in ethically trained generative music and voice AI is here our next speakers are teaming up to address the critical gaps between
• 277:30 - 278:00 Artistic integrity and technological innovation they will explore how AI can Empower creativity provide transparency and opportunities for artists a discussion on their shared vision for a future where Ai and Artistry meet and how AI can serve as a tool that complement rather than competes with human creativity to find out how AI meets Artistry please welcome Shara sandersa co-founder and CEO of Jen and
• 278:00 - 278:30 the legendary musician artist and technologist imin Heap [Music] ai ai a transformative Force shaping our world revolutionizing Our Lives solving challenges or creating problems answering questions raising concern a catalyst for change the power of AI
• 278:30 - 279:00 [Music] hello everybody um it's good to be back on the stage that video was intense yeah should we have some fun let's have a discussion about nice things we're going to let you
• 279:00 - 279:30 into a conversation that we've had probably 500 times that's been us going back and forth maneuvering this we're going to let all of you into our world to let you into my world I've had the tremendous honor of manifesting this genius into my life and many of you know her as a Visionary musician and technologist who has an unparalleled capacity to leverage some of the most
• 279:30 - 280:00 advanced new emerging Technologies and utilize them both in your creations and in the way you market and bring your music to the world it's the definition of an early adopter but and for those of you who don't know her she's a multi Grammy awardwinning recording artist and producer but above all of those things what I've gotten to know is that imagin Heap has the highest level of
• 280:00 - 280:30 Integrity in her heart and that's what brought us together and that's the impetus of this conversation so I I've had the honor of having you walk into my world will you tell the story yes so I'm so happy to know Shara um I came across a because a friend of mine Ed Newton Rex who started up something called fairly trained um to prove the authenticity of a model that it has been permissioned
• 280:30 - 281:00 and is is good um and I was a little bit at a loss because I couldn't find a generative music uh platform that was ethically sourcing um permissioning permissioned musical Works to generate music from and I have a project which is actually coming out today um it's called song. oracles doio and it shows you what you can do with this song but part of it I wanted to enable the the fans to come in and
• 281:00 - 281:30 generate a piece of music based on my piece of music but I couldn't find anyone so I was asking Ed who do I go to and he's like there's one one person one company that I know is doing it um and uh he said this this company called Jen so I was like Jen IM aen Jen I'm liking it Jen very good um so then I I quickly looked up Instagram and I found out who was the CEO you um and then I immediately like followed you and you immediately was like imagent we've got
• 281:30 - 282:00 to talk and I was like yes we do how did you know um and then we had like an extremely long excited conversation and it felt like it was the strangest feeling it was like I was talking to my twin but my twin who's like super amazing like entrepreneur like making just magic stuff happen with hundreds of people and loads of money doing it really well um and me just trying to do the same thing but from a a kind of singular musicians perspective um to how
• 282:00 - 282:30 do we enable and Empower individuals and their Works to do business on their behalf by themselves 24/7 at a data level and um that's where we realized that we could do this amazing collaboration we have a passion for ethics we do ethics is key and that is really something that is been at the core like six years ago just actually looking back on the video uh of me here um talking about the song
• 282:30 - 283:00 as a service back then you expressing all the information that I wanted to put in a song so that it could just go off and and do business with the world so I didn't have to chase stuff or you know bad information gets around kind of closed data sets um and here I am today with an actual working serving a song as a service um because if you can enable the song to give all the permissions and necessary or at least give the song The Choice uh or the human the choice to uh be interacting with these future Services um then you can
• 283:00 - 283:30 grow and build Innovation around that based on ethics because if you don't have a choice uh well you don't have a choice you can't take part I think we're at this moment so I grew up with music in My DNA my dad is a musician I've spent the last 10 to 15 years working at the intersection of music and technology and one of the things I noticed as AI came into the fold over the last three years I started developing gen three years ago and it took me two years to
• 283:30 - 284:00 license all of the data that would train our models to be able to say that this is an ethically trained platform yeah that's what I wanted to say because actually everyone else is doing like the simple easy route well seemingly simple may not be so simple in the future if you get it all wrong now but it's like it is hard to license music it's hard to do the right thing and really this is what I want the songs to be able to do is to make it easy for services to do the right thing to empower them with the
• 284:00 - 284:30 possibility to do that and so you taking the long hard route of doing the proper thing going out there and getting the permissions is what you've been doing and I just I'm so grateful it's a really interesting thing because I spend a lot of time talking about how I've licensed music and I think there can be a misconception when I say that as if I think I'm a hero I'm not a hero for licensing music the complexities Within the Music Industry like you just said make it incredibly
• 284:30 - 285:00 incredibly complicated to be able to license underlying training data so no wonder there are others out there who just say we'll take the world's cataloges of Music train our model on them and deal with the lawsuits later because the music industry is at fault for making this complicated so I think it's a really interesting thing that obviously We've Come Together on and we came together under the guise of elevating the creation of music and how to do that creatively and what I love about you and
• 285:00 - 285:30 someone once said to me the thing about image and Heap is that you may not know her but you know her music and we know your music because it transcends time because you've used technology to evolve your voice and to evolve your instrumentation and you've created almost new sounds and new instruments that have evolved the Sonic landscape and people always ask me why AI music why do you want to make AI music and I
• 285:30 - 286:00 always why did you want to launch an AI music platform and I always say it's not because I believe that the world needs more music we have incredible cataloges more than we could ever listen to in in a lifetime but what we so we don't need more music what we need is the ability for Visionaries all over the world at any level of skill set someone who may never be able to play in instrument or hasn't been able to play an instrument to be able to take the song in their heart or
• 286:00 - 286:30 in their mind and turn it into something that they own and they can use and they can bring out into the world and so when I think about AI music and and what we've spoken about a lot is that we can create products that transcend how creation works and so one of the things that we came together on is a product a patented product that we will launch in the next couple of months called style filter and as I've spent the last 15
• 286:30 - 287:00 years in the music industry I've spent a lot of time in meetings and people say to me if only we could capture the style or the vibe of image and Heap or you name what artist you love if only we could bottle that up and we could put that into something and I always thought what if we could do that and so when we started J three years ago I said we're not creating a platform to allow anyone to create more of the same type of music we need to evolve the way music is
• 287:00 - 287:30 created and so we are going to show you now a video of the transformative power of AI in music if you have a song in your heart you can make music with [Music] gem from concept to composition in seconds transform your music with style
• 287:30 - 288:00 introducing style filter seamlessly Infuse the unique styles of artists and producers into new compositions let's try mine oh yeah by the way this is me image in heat well this is an AI version of my voice powered by Jen permissioned By Me the Human image in Heap using oracles let's take your prompt a little hip hop I
• 288:00 - 288:30 see let's add my style filter to your hipop prompt here's a preview of what we're working with [Music] now here's yours inspired by [Music] mine I like
• 288:30 - 289:00 [Music] it okay let's try another prompt with another style filter this time using my brand new single what have you done to me it goes like this now you're prompt with my
• 289:00 - 289:30 [Music] vibe oh that's pretty [Music] this is next Generation Music Creation groundbreaking patented AI driving Innovation that redefines the Sonic landscape generate refine
• 289:30 - 290:00 transform all you need to make music is your mind High Fidelity Cutting Edge artist first and most importantly we don't steal music or [Music] voices yeah it's pretty exciting nice
• 290:00 - 290:30 work charot it's super exciting because what what currently what happens in the music industry is we are encouraged via algorithm of choice um to create music that sounds similar to other things and the really exciting thing about what you've done is that the more unique the style the sound of that song Or that person the more it gives back to you like if you take away a lot of the the vocalists over tracks you
• 290:30 - 291:00 might actually discover they sound pretty much all alike um and the exciting thing here is that your uniqueness your specific crazy uniqueness is what helps you stand out Above the Rest which you know whether you have that that voice that nobody else has that's the thing that's going to going to go around and be excited exciting people and so at the song level you you are unable to to exhibit the uniqueness of that track whether it's uh um you know the semantic definition of
• 291:00 - 291:30 that track or the instrumentation around it and so by combining this relationship directly with musicians and their work uh all across the world hopefully entirely we have a plan starting on the 9th of December um that we can map all the music makers in the world to be able to have the opportunity to build these systems you know with companies like Jen one of the things we showcased in this video is that imagin permissioned me to build her voice and utilize it in that video via her platform Oracle so like we
• 291:30 - 292:00 were talking about earlier licensing music is hard connecting to artists is hard a lot of times record labels will say to me sharah I know these artist or your friends but can you please come to me to go to them I'm like this makes no sense they're they're people I know and I'm lucky and grateful that I am able to get right to artists like yourself that is not most technology Founders who are building amazing things and want to be able to
• 292:00 - 292:30 utilize those assets whatever they may be and what you've spoken to me so much about is our voice is our identity it is it is what you have and when when AI models train on that without your permission or without your participation they're effectively taking your identity and so through oracles which I'd love for you to talk about why so you created oracles to permission your voice to me and give me permission to to approve what I wanted
• 292:30 - 293:00 to do with it that allows an individual to control their identity their sovereignty and everything that they've created and they will be able to do that by creating an oracle you've been working on this for many years but there is a fire now because of the rise of AI give me your perspective on why now why what you're seeing in the growth of AI has led you to say we need data Providence now more than ever yeah yeah I was uh I'd kind of been lulling
• 293:00 - 293:30 on it a bit because I was focusing on a bit of music making but then I got I started to get these calls more and more you know we want to create a voice you know model out of you we want to do this do this do this and I was like you know me you know that I'd be kind of interested in that you know various different companies but so would many other musicians but how do you reach them and again it was like I need to kind of get get moving again on this identity bit because unless we show ourselves in our many millions uh Music Makers all over the world the the
• 293:30 - 294:00 permissions or the um standards get set by those who are second to us um so that could be the labels it could be the government um you you know how do they decide what's okay at a kind of uh you know at a at a level or not permissioned in permissioned out how do they do that we have to do it individually and so what we hope to do is to which we are doing is creating this ability to for Music Makers to just simply show themselves to have the ability to inspire services to see that they can
• 294:00 - 294:30 they can innovate directly with and for us so that we can build out these services that make sense for us for you uh for musicians for music in at large for human creativity at large you know it's not we're we're lucky in that uh music has some form of you know uh payment it's very extremely slow and makes no sense at all right now um but at least it has a framework um but you know for anyone out there who's writing code or building websites or taking photographs or whatever you're doing
• 294:30 - 295:00 that is all also content that is going into these huge AIS of what of what we're asking in here and eventually if we don't have any attribution to humans or credits to their work it becomes very separate um so the reason now is because because AI um and in a time where there are there is so much innovation in in AI um and music is a is a key part of everyone's lives of course music is often one of the first Technologies to
• 295:00 - 295:30 uh or kind of mediums for technology to want to work with and we've never got it right and we have an opportunity to do it right the landscape is different now we have blockchain we have distributed uh Technologies we have social media we have huge amounts of connections and discussions and we never had that before so it gives us the opportunity for first time in history for Music Makers to actually build this layer and to then Empower ourselves to create this database of Works which for then companies like yourself can then go and develop and be inspired and innovate
• 295:30 - 296:00 with at at the and and basically making ethics easy I think there's an interesting moment in time where there's a lot of fear around Ai and rightfully so and we have a lot of empathy for that but there's a tremendous exciting opportunity to expand the way we create and to do it in a way that offers artist monetization at the start and I think what's amazing about the style filter product and I'm so gracious to bring this grateful to bring this to the world
• 296:00 - 296:30 with you is it showcases how I can you can lend your style to a style filter and participate in the re when a consumer uses that track now imagin will get the revenue something that hasn't happened before and obviously this is complex and we're working with all of the Publishers across the industry to create the Frameworks for this that's one of the things about Jen as a whole is I've been working for two years with all of the Publishers and
• 296:30 - 297:00 labels and cataloges to create licensing Frameworks that would set the stage for what this becomes and that's the beauty of what you've been doing with your thought around oracles which is for artists and musicians and and the likes not just in music all over to be able to set that data point so that when there are innovations that you can participate in from a monetary perspective you're able to do that yeah one of the things that we were talking about earlier that I think we should end on because it's
• 297:00 - 297:30 the most exciting part is that and I mentioned it before is that AI can create things that you've never imagined so you might type been something and just to level set so everyone understands where we're at this is the very beginning of AI Music Creation the things that you will hear on these platforms are a result of their training data if they've licensed that might be a somewhat smaller data set if they have not licensed it might be the world's catalog of music that will showcase the
• 297:30 - 298:00 outputs but even the ones that have trained on more data this is the beginning we're hearing things come out of these platforms that it might not be the perfect saxophone it might not be the perfect chord progression these models are learning and evolving and this is moving at the speed of light so where they will be in the next cou year year to two years will be enamoring and earlier we were talking about how what's cool is that you might hear a sound that's a combination of a saxophone and
• 298:00 - 298:30 a guitar and a piano and you might be three last year you and your company revealed what appeared to be and was ruled to be a plot by previous investors and employers employees sorry to deliberately bankrupt and bring down your company let's go back first of all to 2010 you were 25 you were a high school dropout in
• 298:30 - 299:00 Silicon Valley and you'd worked at slide and then you had an idea so tell us how you that from from that moment when you had the idea and what happened next working at slide I realized that there were so many good Engineers within Silicon Valley but also globally and so we had the founding team of PayPal we had really top people from all over the world working out slide and I thought
• 299:00 - 299:30 it'd be a good idea to bring that caliber of talent or the access to that talent to folks all over the world and so started top TI to be able to do that and became a very successful company well clearly was you were very much ahead of your time because now of course the concept of working remotely for technology companies is mainstream totally mainstream but in 2010 it was less so but when you had the idea you you obviously got started but you raised
• 299:30 - 300:00 some money you raised over $400,000 from and and Horowitz and other investors and you also had an early investor Dennis gross who put in a million dollar into toptw in 2012 um and that investment was in the form of debt a convertible note and the convertible note everyone just to remind you converts to equity when a startup raises more cash but that was on the Proviso that you would convert from a
• 300:00 - 300:30 limited liability company to a corporation and that would mean that you know the Investments would turn into equity and most investors especially in the environment of startups expect a return they expect you to go on to raise more money they expect some somehow to be an exit either a either company is is acquired or an IPO but that didn't happen did it well both parties expect a return if
• 300:30 - 301:00 they're acting in good faith and I think the name of this talk is fitting because we acted in good faith and the other parties acted in bad faith and that's a bit Divergent from what usually happens but in our case we decided to First bootstrap the company so for the first couple years we were actually predominantly bootstrapped Revenue generating profit producing and reinvesting those profits into the company we then decided as you mentioned
• 301:00 - 301:30 to make a effort to raise convertible notes and we did so 400,000 in the first trunch and then a million in let's call it the second trch and so once those convertible notes were consummated we had 1.4 million in total and once you hit the maturity date they expire but they become outstanding notes that assuming both parties are acting in good faith can produce a return but you
• 301:30 - 302:00 decided to run the business not so much as a product company but more like a Services Company correct that is correct and we grew the company by slowly but surely reinvesting the profits back into the business rather than taking a large investment rounde from a venture capitalist and was your idea to reward your investors not through uh exits uh or further fundraising but through dividends we've talked about that at
• 302:00 - 302:30 some point in time the convertible notes were what they were in terms of the terms of the notes they expired on the maturity dates and afterwards they're really just outstanding notes and so long as both parties are acting in good faith there's a lot you can do in terms of renegotiating or talking about hey look you know it expired but fist bump will'll do something for you that's generally how a lot of these things work out assuming both parties are acting in
• 302:30 - 303:00 good faith right yeah and um presumably you thought you were going to have a conversation with your investors about that but in 2020 um you SU the original main investor uh Mr gross and his company mechanism Ventures because you'd said that they'd hired Executives topt Executives you sued them for breach of contract various other legal issues huge issues didn't you um and you went on to win and the case last year you went on
• 303:00 - 303:30 to win that case having suit the Court ruled in your favor the judge ruled in your favor tell us what happened and what that was like well actually a unanimous jury of more than seven ruled in our favor as well as the judge and so uh they lost all of their counter claims they lost all their affirmative defenses and we won the far majority of ours both by unanimous jury verdict and also Visa the judge and so
• 303:30 - 304:00 we proved that there was a plot to deliberately damage bankrupt and deliciously take down top do um it was quite a large uh ruling in your favor how much was it so on a punitive damage side the jury awarded us $15 million in punitive damages a million a little bit around a million in compensatory damages and we have a fee petition right now for
• 304:00 - 304:30 the legal fees of about 31 million which we actually spent probably even even closer to about 37 million and so they'll have to weigh in the courts will have to weigh in as to what the actual amounts will be that'll happen this December now obviously St entrepreneurs and investors often have difficult relations hopefully sometime most of the time they have good ones but sometimes it can be pretty tough what do you think this is an example of what you've been through in
• 304:30 - 305:00 your experience it's an example of a small group of people acting maliciously as proven and in bad faith as proven to seek what they're not entitled to but what they want and what they desire and it's always understandable I think we can all in this room understand the fact that you make a convertible note investment someday hopefully something
• 305:00 - 305:30 happens so that you get some upside Beyond just the percent return that is stipulated within the contract but it's lesson to have conversations with people about what's going wrong in your mind or in your own world about what you want relative to your contract and not to just take action maliciously or in bad faith to pursue conversations in our case it was a very
• 305:30 - 306:00 strange situation we had people who secretly planned a milici ious plot to bankrupt and damage our company none of the people engaged with us in conversations they all did this in secret so they didn't so they didn't call you up and say Hey listen we'd like to get our you know some kind of return for our investment um they you say you and the court agreed with you that they
• 306:00 - 306:30 that's correct yeah and uh actually I if I may I think it'd be uh I think it'd be good to just read a little blurb from the judge and this is actually from a post-trial motion that um really detailed out the specific facts relating to our case and I think it's just a just a paragraph or so but I think it really highlights some of the Salient points
• 306:30 - 307:00 okay during the twoe trial toptal introduced a significant amount of evidence revealing a plot to bring down toptw by Mr Grow the evidence presented at trial revealed a deliberate purposeful plot committed to writing to attack toptal with the ultimate goal of bankrupting the company the evidence showed that a critical piece of the attack was mechanisms wrongful solicitation numerous toptile core team members many of whom have been at toptile for years and held important
• 307:00 - 307:30 roles and furthermore toptal also presented evidence that mechanism acted with trickery and deceit finally the court finds that mechanisms refusal to take responsibility ends up in fraud malice heighten reprehensibility all of these things and so it was quite colorful almost in terms of the outcome and the specific facts that related to it but you know the definition of a plot is
• 307:30 - 308:00 that it happens in secret it wasn't a fight it wasn't a disagreement there was no tension and the lesson from this if any venture capitalist or investor or even founder wants to take away from this don't end up with a judge writing something like this about you this is basically as bad as it gets and to get whatever outcome that's not this better to do that through difficult conversation or some sort of acquest
• 308:00 - 308:30 rather than having to go through a jury trial totally understand but zooming out as a casual Observer and many people aren't familiar with what happened to you and your company or to the investors zooming out what often happens is that you know investors invest in a company expect especially in startups and in Tech you expect a return um it's it's said it's been it's been reported perhaps you'd like to update us that top
• 308:30 - 309:00 tail could be valued at over a billion dollars Mr gross put in $1 million your company is valued at over a billion perhaps you want to comment on that valuation well I can comment on the valuation in terms of what has been submitted to the courts so the other side submitted the valuations of several billions of dollars in regard to Independent valuations related to top out those were not our valuations that was the other side but in our opinion
• 309:00 - 309:30 that actually just makes it even worse CU if you're bankrupting a company worth let's call it $3.3 billion which I believe was one of the numbers then it's multi-billion dollar plot to bankrupt the company not a very good story Fair comment yes uh but as a casual Observer maybe those investors felt like they should have a a bigger outcome than previous than simply um some sort of uh revenues or or
• 309:30 - 310:00 dividends if both parties are acting in good faith I think there's ample grounds to have robust conversation around around expired convertible notes or long outstanding safe agreements something to this effect but if one party decides unilaterally to take bad faith actions to fund malicious conduct that's really outside of the bounds of what I think is ethical and reasonable in the business
• 310:00 - 310:30 environment generally speaking but the the story doesn't fit end there does it because you've also been in litigation with a company called andela and sever of its employees um you alleged that they there was theft of Trade Secrets in pursuit of what you call a perfect clone of your business um this was fired with the Supreme Court of the state of New York um now andela uh for those of you who don't know is also a uh company that does something similar to uh toptw
• 310:30 - 311:00 originally it was designed around uh physical locations physical hubs many of them in Africa employing uh Engineers working remotely and then it pivoted to a remote work business model uh but you um you decided that they were incurring in into your space and um and somehow uh somehow stolen some of your intellectual property but um once again as a casual Observer many people would
• 311:00 - 311:30 cons assume that that's just simply the nature of business that they were going to compete with you on remote work employing uh engineers and product people remotely and that's fair fair business that's fair business practice what you what was your argument about about uh your and your litigation with them well it's a dtsa claim which is a defend against trade secret act which is a federal statute that goes after the theft of Trade Secrets let's actually
• 311:30 - 312:00 look at some of the factual aspects that quote that I just wrote read to the audience here about mechanism the judge explicitly called out three people in his ruling Alan ftis alvare oliera Martin shailan those three people who were part of malicious reprehensible activity all ended up as Executives at andela let's
• 312:00 - 312:30 start with that simple fact it's no coincidence that those individuals that have already been found guilty not just uh liable because these are punitive damages and I should say that uh mechanism really was found guilty as long as as well as its officers and directors so those individuals were not called out as the people but they were called out as examples so just for clarification purposes but those
• 312:30 - 313:00 individuals were called out as an example of the reprehensible conduct and the fact that they moved over to andela it's just no coincidence and so understanding that simple fact is a segue to sort of all the other details that unfold as a part of that so you you don't think that they moved in order just to do a comp compet competitive business model you think that they took what Trade Secrets or something well we know that they were taking documents off
• 313:00 - 313:30 of our system just from the current discovery that we have on indela that is actually public already because we moved the court to federal court and as part of the updated complaint many of the different files that were um quoted from were in that complaint and so you can actually see in the federal complaint some of the absolutely egregious and absurd chats that they had on slack of
• 313:30 - 314:00 taking our information and implementing it into their own company it's it's pretty egregious right um but I mean um other companies compete in rote working and it's obviously a business that's gone completely uh mainstream now because you know you have Fiverr malt freelancer.com LinkedIn touring upwork now you have other companies startups many of them worth a lot uh you know you've got deal you've
• 314:00 - 314:30 got oyster um you've got other kinds of uh remote Work Platforms why in particular did you have a problem with andela working in that way well I know Hayden Brown at upor I know Ma at Fiverr I know Alex at deal I know all these folks very well I've had dinner with them I've had lunches with them we know each other we're on very good terms and we compete with each other from time to time however they didn't go into top tow and take Trade
• 314:30 - 315:00 Secrets and Implement them into their own organizations they might even be bigger in some instances and even more competitive in some areas but when people unfairly compete and really try to maliciously harm your business that's unacceptable right bring us up to date 2024 it's clearly a very successful company uh it's millions of dollars in revenues you're continuing to build out
• 315:00 - 315:30 the platform you've obviously got a lot of clients across the world many in the US what's next sure so so we're hundreds of millions in Revenue our last audited financials were a bit over 200 million in net revenues we're expanding into different areas we just launched marketing this year at can lions and so that's been very successful we have tremendous growth in that area and so we're looking at other opportunities that relate to the talent space we're super excited about going into those
• 315:30 - 316:00 areas full on so you've launched into marketing now do do you see this um continuing in terms of like other areas you could go into yeah we see areas in regard to All Professional Services that we can go into if you look at what Accentra and cognizant have done and you kind of look at what uick and Fiverr have done there's the sort of in the middle area that toptile plays in high skilled labor but Professional Services and managed delivery and managed Services we take
• 316:00 - 316:30 the best of remote work but we combine it with a really strong White Glove relationship to work with global 2000s Fortune 500s and do their most serious work and so we're going to continue to do that and build that out has all of this litigation and time in court takak a personal toll on you I would say that the first litigation took a significant personal toll on me because it was malicious conduct it was conduct that was done in
• 316:30 - 317:00 bad faith done maliciously and it was to damage top tow and did damage top tow is proven in a court of law and it was very personal meaning they did it in part as a personal attack it wasn't just a professional business dispute it was very personal and very specific in the way they did it so um the dtsa claim with andela you know um it's a lot of
• 317:00 - 317:30 work but it's uh part of business I suppose it certainly is and it's a a very interesting story I must admit well tasso thank you so much for coming to web Summit ladies and gentlemen tat Deval from topt and for me Mike Butcher have a great conference thank you [Applause] [Music]
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• 318:30 - 319:00 woo here we go hello everyone welcome to the Winner's announcement of pitch yeah let's get some out let's get some applaud in here come up here EDI join me all right it's been a long three days right everyone all right so here is the Winner's announcement of pitched the world's greatest startup competition and this Edition was particularly intense
• 319:00 - 319:30 out of 2700 startups here at web Summit 105 of them were selected to compete in the pitch competition from those 105 five only three emerged Victorious and pitched earlier today in the Grand Final here on Center Stage I'd like to thank all the judges Caitlyn Wan Pablo and Edith who were involved and of course all the startups who gave their absolute best over the last two days it's amazing to see so many passionate Founders pitching their businesses to our
• 319:30 - 320:00 audience now before we announce our overall winner let's take a look at who you the audience voted for let's bring up the slido pitch all right so intivo 46% Scouts 28% and gov gbt 26% Edith what do you think does that look kind of similar to what you guys
• 320:00 - 320:30 the judges were uh thinking about let's start with intu intuitivo what did you guys think of that by the way the audience vote only count for 25% only counts for 25% ah got it got it so our vote really count yes got it all right um I think the first one intuitivo did a really well first off how many of you are supporter intivo we have a lot of local fans a lot of local fans um I think the founder did a really really great job so to
• 320:30 - 321:00 articulate the size of the market if I remember correctly it was like 80 some million and at least like 40 some million of them is going going to leave the education space that was um they really want to be the teacher's best friend I loved like the tech line and you know I was actually trying to convince him that hey you should say most of your Founders mothers are teacher and he's like no no my mom is not and I just love the fact that he had very very strong Integrity to make sure that you know like everything he said
• 321:00 - 321:30 was real so we really you guys like those guys of course of course all right and how about Scouts Scout is awesome and and know the founders actually was a pro athlete before which gave him a lot of credibility so he tell a very very great story and then on top of that like they already have revenu so like 30 30,000 uh Mr um so who did a really really great job to articulate that he's doing well so who is supporting Scouts
• 321:30 - 322:00 all right oh athlete right there all right okay all right and the last one was gov GPT the the vest St gvt is awesome um the founder literally show up um and did the whole you know turnaround 360 and demonstrate a product right in front of us uh and on top of that he came from law enforcement and these days Hardware particular weapon Tech is making a huge comeback I think like worldwide there's a lot of investment
• 322:00 - 322:30 like going into this field so there's a lot of Downstream investors are waiting to invest great so you guys have made a decision yeah yeah okay who do you think is going to win this year let's hear you all right let's go to drum roll in the music let's dim the lights I I feel like they're The Bachelor oh yeah they are The Bachelors right here how come there's more of them now it was
• 322:30 - 323:00 only all right so the winner is I in eval [Music]
• 323:00 - 323:30 [Applause] amazing here you go come on up come up to the front a lot of fans in the audience here thank you guys all right you know winner winner first first question how does it feel crazy wasn't expecting it uh the public a little bit because we're Portuguese and maybe a little bit biased but very
• 323:30 - 324:00 happy uh about this most of all I just wanted to say something which is that I'm the one doing the talking here uh today but we have a whole team we're only three here we're right uh but we have a whole team doing the working uh behind the scenes so I just wanted to give this out to them and also uh thank everyone our investors our incubators our advisers it's amazing what an experience going to remember this for the rest of of my life yeah what are you going to do next next party first of all yeah
• 324:00 - 324:30 probably I think we deserve it uh eat because I haven't been eating for like one day maybe okay uh and then uh continue back to work continue to work excellent congratulations in Vito give me the mic give me the hold the up sign up no hold the sign up yeah great thank you all right thank you [Music]
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• 325:00 - 325:30 South American Tech is thriving and the startup ecosystem in Brazil is growing at an unbelievable rate with massive unicorn level startups like kitas Kinton I food and wild life that's why we think there's no better City to host a South American Gathering off the Global Tech
• 325:30 - 326:00 Community than hug janir this past April we've hosted our second annual event and welcome more than 30 ,000 people 1,000 startups and 500 investors into the iconic City and we're doing it again next year with confirmed speakers from Nvidia Tik Tok gift Hub GES and much more Maron Sila is the CEO of transfer group a startup based in Rio so Maron thank of first of all thank you so much
• 326:00 - 326:30 for joining us here in and I would like to ask you what are two things about Brazil that you think that your fellow star startups would benefit in knowing about as you know Brazil it's a huge country with a lot of problems and maybe you can solve a problem and become a new unicorn so our diversity our companies our ecosystem for Innovation and Innovation hubs maybe can help you to
• 326:30 - 327:00 grow fast so Brazil it's a good place to establish your project there and is speaking about about here uh in in real you found some amazing hubs for Innovation AS marav Val we have the invest R trying to bring you to Rio in providing some incentives for establish your startup in Rio and transfer can help you to establish there allowing you
• 327:00 - 327:30 to transact so it's amazing place to start your project in Brazil all right thank thank you so much Mar I welcome you all to join us in Brazil next year for the third web Summit R in April 2024 soris this is web Summit Rio [Music]
• 327:30 - 328:00 [Music] [Music] attention passengers we've now reached our [Music]
• 328:00 - 328:30 destination hey heyy [Music] so once the subject of science fiction movies AI has unlocked a world of new possibilities for creating lifelike human avatars in video now that this
• 328:30 - 329:00 technology is at our fingertips how will it change the way companies work sell and interact with customers to show us the next Frontier of video please welcome the chief product officer of sinesia sinesia sorry Brewster [Music] Stanis ai ai a transformative Force shaping our world revolutionizing Our Lives solving
• 329:00 - 329:30 challenges or creating problems answering questions raising concern a catalyst for change the power of [Music] AI hello everyone what a wonderful audience today I'm Brewster and I'm the
• 329:30 - 330:00 chief product officer at Synthesia and I'm here to talk to you a little bit today about how AI is changing the future of of communication by making video creation accessible to all because the truth is today people don't want to read reading is time consuming reading can be boring reading takes a ton of energy there's a reason why products like Tik Tok are so popular is because people want Dynamic immersive
• 330:00 - 330:30 visual experiences people want to watch and listen they don't want to read and we know this scientifically our brains are wired this way we understand Concepts better when they're visual we remember Concepts we recall those Concepts so much better when they're taught to us visually and we actually did a study with the University College of London one of the best AI institutions in the world and what we found is that 77% of
• 330:30 - 331:00 people learned better from AI video than from text which I think is pretty incredible but I think perhaps is even more compelling is we also did a study comparing the impact of AI created video with regular old-fashioned human created video and what we found was that the AI created video is actually 20% more effective humans learn Concepts 20% faster when they watched an AI generated
• 331:00 - 331:30 video than they did the oldfashioned way so just to think about that for a second AI is already 20% more effective at teaching humans through video and I think a big reason why this is is something I'd like to introduce to you here moravian's rule of communication now this is a rule that tries to understand what really composes a message what are the key components of the messages that we share and what it states is that only 7% of that message
• 331:30 - 332:00 is actually the words that are spoken so if I talk to you like this and I don't don't move and I don't like it's you don't understand what I'm saying because you don't have all of the cues I have intonation in my voice I have inflection in my voice that signals to you what I'm trying to say but the most important part isn't the words or what you say it's it's actually what you see it's the body language it's the facial expressions it's the gestures that's how
• 332:00 - 332:30 I can effectively communicate to all of you how I'm feeling and how I'm feeling today is very excited to be here and very excited to share this with you but again if I said that to you monotone I'm not sure any of you would believe it and that's the power of visual learning the power of visual communication but historically I think we've thought about video as just a means of entertainment of course we all love the movies we love Netflix if we think about the super high quality advertising that we see this is very
• 332:30 - 333:00 high production quality video but in reality video is so much more than that video is is fundamentally changing the ways that we communicate the ways that we share knowledge video makes everyone so much more productive at home and at work and if you think about it today video is already everywhere so I'm sure many of us in our day-to-day work we're on Zoom calls all day we're on slack
• 333:00 - 333:30 calls we're on teams calls whatever your preferred service is now that's a very high volume type of video but very low cost you just turn on your webcam and you start shooting right that is all through our days in every Workforce and on the other side of the coin you have the super high quality video the Super Bowl ads very high production value you know there's a reason why people spend millions and millions of dollars to get these ads in front of audiences is because they're very effective at
• 333:30 - 334:00 delivering a message they resonate with audiences but they're very expensive and timec consuming to make so what about the middle well today most asynchronous communication the way that we actually communicate across businesses across our office is still done in a very text Heavy way we communicate with word docs with Google Docs with PDFs with wikis you know like this today I'm using a PowerPoint slightly more visual but in reality none
• 334:00 - 334:30 of those are really the best way to help someone learn to teach someone a concept video is so much more effective it's so much more immersive for our Communications and we really believe that everyone should be communicating through video delivering that message in the most compelling possible way but that's been hard to do historically because creating video is tough it's very difficult it's time consuming it's expensive it's complex so
• 334:30 - 335:00 let's say you want to make a video you've got a great idea well first off you have to write a script then you have to go find some actors to act out that script then you have to film that script then once you're done filming you have to edit and now let's say you want to distribute this video across the world well now you have to translate it that's a lot of work now let say something changes you know your concept changes your format changes well you have to go all the way back to the beginning and do it again now in Hollywood they can do post- production but for the majority of
• 335:00 - 335:30 us trying to create videos this is a very very difficult process it has just been so hard to create videos and that's why that middle of the pyramid has been historically filled with all these text Heavy artifacts but AI is changing all of that because what AI is doing is taking the marginal cost of creating content down to zero now this started with chat GPT when suddenly you could create Haus Sonics limmer whatever your preferred
• 335:30 - 336:00 poem is that easily you could create written word just by snapping your fingers now we start to see that with images what you see here is from mid journey and the same is true of video I have an example here from open ey Sora runways also doing great work here but now anyone can create very high defition very immersive beautiful compelling video experiences and we really believe that that is the future we think that anybody
• 336:00 - 336:30 should be able to create video and at Synthesia that's exactly what we do we are democratizing video so that anyone with just a few keystrokes and just a few minutes can create compelling videos leveraging our technology and we've done this for some of the biggest and most sophisticated Enterprises in the world I want to talk to you a little bit about zoom and how zoom trains its Salesforce so historically they've done this what I'd call the old-fashioned way sending a bunch of documents hey sales team you
• 336:30 - 337:00 got to read through all of this you got to read through this PowerPoint and you know it's hard to even know are people actually engaging with this content and they thought there's got to be a better way to teach folks there's got to be a better way to get people to learn and so they came to Synthesia and said help us and of course we did and using Synthesia what Zoom was able to do was take the time it took to create a video down 90% And in doing so they saved $1,500
• 337:00 - 337:30 per employee so thousand employees $1,500 I mean those are millions of dollars we're talking about even even for Zoom that's real money and they did this across hundreds of videos I also want to share an example with you from Pepsi so Pepsi wanted to do a brand activation with Messi and I know I'm in Portugal now so I'm sorry I don't have a Ronaldo example but forgive me and they sought to really make Messi part of their brand and so they built a micro site experience where anyone could
• 337:30 - 338:00 go to that site type in a message for Messi to send and then they could share that message from Messi with all of their friends with all of their family with all of their colleagues so let's take a look at what that looks like this is Messi hey Daniel what's up my friend Sean has invited us to watch the game on Wednesday hope I can make it but because we're using an avatar of Messi this is not the real Messi we've not filmed
• 338:00 - 338:30 Messi doing this Messi can speak English but Messi can also speak Chinese hey so to the best of my knowledge Messi doesn't actually speak Mandarin but this is the power of AI suddenly anyone can communicate across any language by filming a single video and this was a hugely successful brand activation for Pepsi generated over 7 million
• 338:30 - 339:00 videos and like I've said we've done this for some of the biggest brands in the world in fact fact over 60% of the Fortune 100 trust Synthesia to make video across 55,000 total customers and the reason why some of these very sophisticated Enterprises choose Synthesia why they trust Synthesia is because we've been at the Forefront of responsible AI development since we were founded so we have a
• 339:00 - 339:30 framework we like to call the three C's and it starts with consent in in order to make an avatar in order to make a digital twin of someone we require their biometric consent meaning on video they have to say they consent to having this twin be created we give them a dynamic passcode so it can't be hacked in that way we believe that everyone should have control over their likeness and that your likeness should only be used in the ways that you want secondly we have very very stringent moderation controls so if you
• 339:30 - 340:00 think about social media today you know if you create an inappropriate or video it might get posted and eventually it gets flagged reported and taken down well frankly we think that is not good enough so we moderate every single video at the point of creation so if there's something in there that doesn't meet our standards we don't even let that video be created the video is never generated at all so it can't be distributed because it doesn't
• 340:00 - 340:30 exist and finally collaboration we work with some of the biggest tech companies in the world all of the regulatory bodies to build new standards things like water marking files so it's clear that they were altered or generated by Ai and not just natural video so it used to be that you had to be a video editor to make video but I think to grow the productivity of everyone in this room and everyone in the world we need to make everyone a video creator whether you're a product
• 340:30 - 341:00 manager or a support person or an IT person video should be accessible to all and that's our mission and I think we're doing a pretty good job we've already had a million users of Synthesia and I hope after today maybe we'll get a few more thousand and those users are around the world they represent over 120 countries but the truth is we're really just getting started and we're very very excited about what's to come because
• 341:00 - 341:30 video as a format is continuing to evolve it's continuing to change the pace at which AI is driving driving change is enormous so let's take a look at the original Amazon site and talk a little about the evolution of the web so on the left there you have the original Amazon you can see very text Heavy light HTML not particularly compelling on the right you can see what Amazon looks like today all visual super compelling super
• 341:30 - 342:00 Dynamic this is the experience that everyone expects to see on the web today in in the very same way the format of video is changing now if you look to the left here you'll see the oldfashioned way classic point and shoot video on the right you can see how the format is evolving suddenly you can annotate video you can comment on video you can ask questions of video and with deep video analytics you can actually build a feedback loop that makes that
• 342:00 - 342:30 video Dynamic to the user so that whatever they're consuming is actually what they want to be consuming informed by how they engage with that video and so we're building what we think is the most comprehensive AI video platform in the world we call this Synthesia 2.0 and it's really comprised of Three core pillars the first is creation so we've built a video editor that makes it dead
• 342:30 - 343:00 simple for anyone regardless of who you are to make a video using just your keyboard in a few minutes you do not have to be a professional editor anyone can make a video but we realize these things are not created in a vacuum teams make video and that's why we built realtime collaboration so you can co-edit a video so you can work on a script together at the same time so you can add animations across your team and once you create a video of
• 343:00 - 343:30 course you need to get it to your audience sharing distribution is very important and so we've built an AI native video player that allows the viewer to choose whatever language they'd like to consume the video in so that means you can shoot create a video in English publish that to one player and then a viewer can choose actually I want to see that in Spanish or Hungarian or any other language and the video will change to that language with perfect lip sync and perfect dubbing in that
• 343:30 - 344:00 language so you don't have to create 130 videos or localize to 130 pages just create it once but I want to share a little bit more about what we've released some of the newest Innovation that we brought to Market first I'd like to share a little bit with you about our expressive avatars so what you see here is our current generation of avatars that emote and if we go back to Marian's rule of communication so much of that message these avatars aren't saying anything but I bet you can tell what their meaning is what they're trying to
• 344:00 - 344:30 connote to you just by the looks on their faces so we've trained our models based on Tech to be able to infer what the meaning of that text is what those words actually relate to in terms of emotion in terms of expression and given just that script these avatars know how to emote they know how to express so let's show you that in action I am so happy to be here it makes me
• 344:30 - 345:00 ecstatic I am not having a great day today I'm quite sad that makes me quite angry it seems very unfair so again we haven't told these video These avatars that they have any emotion that they should act in a certain way simply from the model they're inferring how they should Express how they should emote and these are the stock avatars that we provide in our platform but you can also create your own digital twin and so you can take with just a few minutes of video footage and put yourself in any scenario
• 345:00 - 345:30 in any background and and suddenly be able to speak any language so this personal Avatar can speak Spanish or German hey there this is how a Synthesia personal Avatar looks and sounds like or English and you can see in each one of
• 345:30 - 346:00 these videos it's maintaining the original speaker's accent the original speaker's intonation it really as if that person can speak these languages and they can exist anywhere I also think we've solved one of the most challenging problems in video creation today the cold start problem tabular rasa what do you do with a blank canvas it's very hard to engender that creativity so we've built an AI video assistant that lets you take
• 346:00 - 346:30 any PDF any PowerPoint any URL any script and bring it into Synthesia and we will automatically make a compelling video for you we will write the script based on that PowerPoint based on that PDF we will output a video with scenes and animations and Transitions and all this takes is just a few minutes alongside this because we support so many International companies
• 346:30 - 347:00 we've introduced oneclick translation so again you can create a video and with just one click that video Works across any language and just this week we've released the ability to bring videos that you didn't create in Synthesia into Synthesia and have that same functionality so if you have a library of videos somewhere and you want to start Distributing them into a new market that you've entered you can again have those dubbed with perfect lip sync so that's some of what we've done recently but as a product person what
• 347:00 - 347:30 really excites me is what we're going to do next so I want to give you a little preview for Summit something that we never shown before so live demos hopefully they go well um I want to talk to you a little bit about what we call interactivity I talked about the future of video and how as a format it's fundamentally changing and so what that means is video should be dynamic should be able to choose your adventure through them there should be calls to action if you have a marketing use case you should be able to get information you should be able to ask questions of the viewer and so
• 347:30 - 348:00 that's why we're building interactivity welcome to the interactive world of Synthesia 2.0 [Music] how can I help you today I would love to help you with [Music]
• 348:00 - 348:30 that so the thing I'm actually most excited about is our next generation of avatars so here what you can see is our those nextg avatars and you can see the gestures that they can do just how expressive they are the truth is for me I can't tell the difference between my own parents and the avatars were able to generate from them they're that photorealistic and amazingly we're now able to do this from a single
• 348:30 - 349:00 image so this is Adam we took a few selfies of Adam and we brought them into Synthesia and from these selfies maybe Adam wants to be someone who he's not today he wants to be a pilot or maybe he wants to be an EPL player so this is not Photoshop this is all generated leveraging AI to put Adam in this costume in these places but we're not an image company we're a video company so we don't just stop there we let based on these single selfies a video of any
• 349:00 - 349:30 scenario of any costume with any language where whever Adam might want to be so let's say Adam wants to go to the top of Mount Everest now he can incredible you know never ever in a million years did I think I would actually make it up here or he can be that pilot even if he doesn't know how to fly I'll tell you a secret I have absolutely no idea how to fly this
• 349:30 - 350:00 thing so again we did not film any of these videos this is all generated using AI from single images and so I hope you can see from this how transformative video can be as a communication mechanism the truth is in the future we are only limited by our creativity all of you can create whatever you want you can get your message across more effectively than you ever could before and that is the power
• 350:00 - 350:30 of generative video and that is how AI is changing the future of communication thank you so much [Applause] [Music]
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• 352:30 - 353:00 vintage is a secondhand Marketplace that posted over 590 million euros in Revenue last year which was an increase of 61% over the
• 353:00 - 353:30 previous year our next session will be a discussion on how a Marketplace from Lithuania became a profitable European Tech leader and their mission to make pre-loved products more mainstream as well as explor some of the advantages and key challenges of building a leading tech company in Europe to learn how you can make secondhand your first choice in conversation with joy Montgomery from British fogue please welcome the CEO of
• 353:30 - 354:00 vintage Thomas planta and partner at eqt kolina Brad [Applause] [Music] hi hello thanks so much for join me
• 354:00 - 354:30 today yes I mean I've got a lot I want to dive into so I think let's kick off with Thomas can you give us a brief history of vintage what was the journey from it growing from a small Lithuanian business into a market leader now valued at 5 billion EUR yeah so from zero to 5 billion it's actually multiple stories so it started with yustus and Milda uh meeting each other at a party in Lithuania Milda
• 354:30 - 355:00 moving from counter to vilus and having to deal with a lot of clothing um they build a product to together that really got organically a lot of traction uh they raised money from uh International Venture Capital funds and they actually built something that was working then they introduced the business model uh which was practically the old eBay style seller fee business model and that kind of destroyed the business and then when it was kind of in freef Fall collapse in 2016 I met the team and there the second
• 355:00 - 355:30 part of the story starts where together with the team we developed a plan on how to kind of turn that around and then we found a new business model restructured the company and set it up for success for practically the second part of the story where we were truly able to scale this business to let's say this valuation with the underlying economics as we have them um which was the second part so practically two acts an um entrepreneurial creative beginning a little bit of almost dying in between
• 355:30 - 356:00 and then scaling to this size I mean it's amazing to see how the tech um world and the digital revolution has really changed this hean Market I mean how how have you seen that Evolution yeah I think that we've we've seen several waves and I think now in the the every wave enabled us to do things more efficiently and I think if you look longer over longer term at Tech or at Fashion every time somebody was able to do something at a completely new
• 356:00 - 356:30 different scale of efficiency that overtook the whole market so that in the beginning started with for example Levis later with H&M and Zara who figured out how to produce clothing and now we see a whole new wave with shine as well doing that again other different phase and on the tech side practically with second hand something similar has happened so in the beginning we had these old platforms like eBay and Mark plats and everything and they they always had secondhand clothing to be bought online
• 356:30 - 357:00 but then when we enabled technology in a way to make that so much more efficient and so much more cheaper for people then all of a sudden it started to work and really grew to a new stage of growth and I think that that's what we have seen now a third layer that we are getting now is practically everything that has to do with predictive statistics AI machine learning that will again be a wave of efficiency and and I think everybody is talking about that but then what nobody is talking about is practically the unsexy things that you need to do to
• 357:00 - 357:30 actually scale this and to actually make this efficient so everybody's talking about Ai and how it's going to save the world and we are now with AI we are at charlatan level 100 where everybody says that it's going to be amazing but actually what really now is important for us is doing very basic unsexy things very efficiently so we run our own servers we run our own security software we're building our own shipping company we're building our own payments company we're doing those things that we know that will cut out every cent out of the value chain to ensure that we can give
• 357:30 - 358:00 low cost to our users to actually bring it to another level so I I think every technology change will help AI is a big wave but I think there is a lot of things to do within the fundamentals as well of absolutely and I think kolina it' be great if you could speak to you know what in your experience has been the signs of a successful resale business and what it was about Vinted that really stood out to you yes um so Vinted is a really special company for
• 358:00 - 358:30 lots of the reasons that actually Thomas has has talked about um one of the incredible things that Vinted is doing that only very few businesses have ever done through the technology Cycles or Industrial Revolution Cycles is change the size of a market by growing it and also by really disrupting a market in that they're taking share away from firsthand which had for so much time been where all the disruption was happening into secondhand so let me explain if you if you take a step back
• 358:30 - 359:00 what we see as a macro trend is the younger Generations millennials Z's Etc gen Alpha um you know the things that they value is style price and waste they don't have the stigma about things being used anymore right which used to be the case and so that perfectly suits itself for a secondhand fashion model but I think to the exact point that Thomas made earlier um the the previous marketplaces for this were very local um
• 359:00 - 359:30 and they were full of friction and as a result The NPS scores were terrible and so nothing really traded right and then Vinted came along and they started doing everything faster better cheaper um and so now it was possible to buy and sell things that were otherwise stuck in your closet because you know they might have sold for €1 EUR or 15 EUR but if you had to walk around to a parking lot and maybe get you know murdered at the parking lot you probably wouldn't do anything with it but now here you can
• 359:30 - 360:00 you know trade across countries um and so that is something that's incredibly special incredibly unique and I think that's what creates generation defining companies like Ubers airbnbs and and and Vinted and I think if you think about the local sort of charot shop model or the car boot sale it's such it's like the world away you know and I think the idea of generational shifts is really interesting and I don't know Thomas you want to speak to that is this idea of how that has changed particularly for genz it's so much more of that kind of
• 360:00 - 360:30 it's the first choice when they're shopping why do you think that is and yeah yeah I think as as fast fashion became so much more accessible to everybody it also became less unique and I think when you're young and you're developing yourself you want to express yourself with clothing and you want to be able to find certain things that your friends don't have but fit your personality and when everybody's wearing the same H&M shine stuff then that's not possible so when you have then this
• 360:30 - 361:00 marketplace where everything gets reused of let's say years and years of fashion and everything is available you can shape your style and your uniqueness more than what you could do with just regular new stuff and I think so so that's an element then the second element is less sexy it's practically that it's cheaper so the moment that this platform is available to you anytime you buy something you have in the back of your head that there is a price at which you can sell it so the consumption cost of wearing clothing is not the full price of the product
• 361:00 - 361:30 anymore but a fraction of the Delta between the resale price and the price you're going to buy it and that enables people to also just be way more efficient with their money and I think those two things combined with the whole sustainability thinking is something that very much appeals to practically not only a Generation Z or another generation like us this generation this time in which we're living right now we realize that we cannot burn the whole world for fashion we realize that we have to be careful with our money and
• 361:30 - 362:00 but we still want to look cool and change our clothing time to time so this have all these elements and it fits into to that I think yes and I think it's ultimately been the same you know forever for younger people they like used say that one that accessible PR price point but now this allows them to have this whole you know online sphere where they can access it to wherever they are in the world exactly um and can I add one thing one of the things that we're seeing in consumer is that um gen Alpha and Gen X right the very young
• 362:00 - 362:30 generation they're the most connected generation ever but they're also the most lonely generation ever which is you know quite interesting if you think about it um and and and the aspect that vented also lends itself which I think is an output of everything else is this also this aspect of like Community everyone uses it you go in there you know I love myself the negotiating right and like a part of that and I I wouldn't also underestimate that either yeah absolutely and I think the idea of that sort of we were talking about the backstage sort of the future vintage
• 362:30 - 363:00 this idea particularly with luxury buying something that's really high quality and knowing that it's going to have that retail value in the fut in the future state so and I think particularly that's very appealing to people who have that more disposable income yeah for sure but I think you know you mentioned it earlier but I think um there are a lot of unique challenges that people face when trying to scale a resale business whether that's behavioral as we were talking about or logistical what have been the things that you've faced over the years trying to scale vented
• 363:00 - 363:30 well I think there there are several parts so we are running our own servers so as you grow at this skill you constantly are in a battle to be able to serve your customers with quick up time and quick quick server time so being able to build servers at scale cost efficiently has been one of big things that we we cracked then another thing that we done which is almost like an arms race as you become the biggest secondhand platform you also become the biggest targets for scammers so we've consistently have been building you know
• 363:30 - 364:00 top-notch technology to ensure that we keep these scammers out so that's a huge Challenge and every time the numbers get bigger it becomes more attractive to try to crack us then another element is that you need to be able to do customer support at scale not with let's say 100 transactions but lit say hundreds of millions of transactions so to do this you need to automize a lot and machine learning and AI has helped a lot with this but this this is a very big challenge as well then a third element is that we're the first ones who are
• 364:00 - 364:30 connecting all these countries together so then you come to a challenge where you have multi Vector matching of practically uh people and items so you have different shipping prices you have different item prices different country routs all those kind of things and need to match the content based on all these vectors so our content algorithms have to consistently improve to deal with those volumes and with those complexities so those challenges have been big and then there is the whole part I'm now talking mostly about let's
• 364:30 - 365:00 say fundamental parts that we're building then there is this whole part that you have to sell your companies for all the kind of economical climates that they're there so you know in the beginning 2017 18 kind of calm down climate everything is okay then you have covid huge disruptions shipping stopped all kinds of things are happening Market Hypes up like prices go up of internet companies everybody wants to throw money at you then the whole thing collapses everybody's like ah we overpaid for everything and then things calm down
• 365:00 - 365:30 again we have war in Europe all those things you have to seil through so I think it's all also as you get bigger these Market movements also have more impact on you and finding within your team that stability to deal with that and resilience to deal with that is important and a big part of that is also having the right Partners so we were able to to very calmly s through all these moments and so these distressful moments because we investors and backers who think longterm and keep their cool when that's needed and for that you know
• 365:30 - 366:00 you need the right people at your boardroom as well so those are the things I think that are most important yeah and I think in connection with that in terms of trying to change consume behaviors what are the sort of barriers to Second Hand truly becoming a mainstream first choice for the customers you're reaching out to so I think one of the key barriers was cost and user friction and we were able to run this model at a cost level that is roughly four times lower than
• 366:00 - 366:30 any of our competitors were doing so we brought a proposition to Market that is four to five times cheap ER then we were able to run that more efficiently than anybody else because we're really deeply invested into the underlying technology and then a third thing was that uh we practically enabled to work and align all the third parties that are supporting us so payment Companies shipping companies other software companies that are helping us to follow this path of aiming on high volume with
• 366:30 - 367:00 low cost per transaction practically and I think those are the key elements that that we that we put in that enabled this to to scale to a new level there's also consumer trust I know you've recently um introduced authentication and I think that's so important particularly if you're expanding into the world of luxury people know that you have you know that have that kind of intermediary um body that can check these products and yeah yeah so this is actually nice so I I was mostly talking about the past we're really focused on lowc cost and
• 367:00 - 367:30 and and good function and now what we're doing is that we for years and years we optimized our model on these low value items and now we're applying all these Technologies by going into the high value categories but also by going into categories like Electronics furniture all the other stuff so we practically you know sharpened our knives in the low value fashion category and we're now sticking them into other categories seeing where that works so that's yeah definitely a big part trust right I'd love to go back to you um Carolina last
• 367:30 - 368:00 year saw vintage launch launch into a number of new regions I believe Finland gree Croatia but how would you say that growing a tech business in Europe in the European market compares to the US so I think there there's several differences some are advantages some are disadvantages but I think if we focus on one thing um you know when we see Europe Europe is actually several different markets with different languages with different complexities people like
• 368:00 - 368:30 buying differently they like paying using different methods they like shipping different ly they're like receiving their shipments differently and so these are all very complicated you know everything that Thomas just described these are very complicated nuanced um operational problems to solve and the US for the most part and yeah in marketing if you're doing TV there's different regions but it's still just one very deep Market um and so I think when you scale in Europe it is very very
• 368:30 - 369:00 very unusual to find examples like vented that have been able to go into so many many markets by the way from an organizational perspective mostly centrally organized meaning you're not adding complexity in all these local markets right you're extracting the most because everyone's you know by domain sitting centrally um that's that's very difficult to do well I know I was speaking to someone earlier about um something very specific but in Germany the returns rates for shopping is is
• 369:00 - 369:30 like absolutely massive compared to the UK and those sort of small don't get me started about the Germans a lot different in Germany but that's the thing and I think that's why it's incredible that Vint has managed to reach so many different regions from that perspective yeah but if I if I can say something on this point and also relating back to what Thomas says right because when Thomas speaks about these things it seems so obvious that you should have been investing in infrastructure to be able to serve your users better but as someone who you know meets I don't know 400 management teams a year usually the
• 369:30 - 370:00 pitch you heard was oh my UI and ux it worked so much better my app looks just so beautiful and this other app looks like a garage sale right and actually what was happening in the background which was quite a contrarian bet at the time were these investments in things that you couldn't immediately see that you couldn't immediately see payoff but became you know such an enormous Mo um that of course later plays out and you're like oh yeah duh but you know at the time this was not so
• 370:00 - 370:30 obvious it's getting the fundamentals right before you can build that you have a beautiful brand but ultimately it doesn't work behind the scenes and if people don't want to buy from it then has no longevity I I I think that's exactly right so you brand can be beautiful but if it's three times more expensive and it's the same thing like nobody wants it yeah well I think that leads us um perfectly on to the next topic which is you know the fashion industry as a whole you know hasn't had the easiest time of it I would say over the last couple of years but it has been
• 370:30 - 371:00 interesting to see how certain brands both High Street and designer have brought their um archives inhouse so creating their own preab platform and it'd be really interesting to know how that has impacted vintage or the Reta landscape more broadly Thomas yeah so I think um if if you look at the total secondhand Market it's it's actually pretty small compared to all the new sales so new sales Europe fashion 400 billion so so we're tiny compared to
• 371:00 - 371:30 that then all the initiatives of these Brands themselves are even much much much smaller than that so we're really at the early stages of developing secondhand so at this point in time I think those are great initiatives they all help to normalize and make secondhand first choice and that brands are doing that is pretty logical because they want to hold on to that customer relationship yet it is very difficult for them to actually create a marketplace where everything is available and what people want is
• 371:30 - 372:00 something where they can buy everything at the lowest possible price so I think there is a role for this and I think it's logical that companies are doing this yet I don't see it directly as an competition to us it doesn't hurt us it practically helps to normalize secondhand at this point in time as we are such an early journey in this market and I think for luxury brands also it's having control of their narrative as well so even if it's not you know appealing to a mass audience it's they know that they have those products that
• 372:00 - 372:30 are in their archive and they can hold on to that and they can make sure their customer Journey so I guess for them it's beneficial yeah but I think from from a High Street perspective is maybe a different situation you know there's the rapid growth of fast fashion and would do you see that as being a kind of problem with the sort of the retail Market is does it have a place in the circular economy if things are super cheap you know don't have that longevity so I think um so there are a lot of misconceptions around this like the longevity of a polyester shirt is is not
• 372:30 - 373:00 shorter because it's cheaper it's actually long longer because Plastics they they don't break down so it is no problem that we're producing fashion at a lower price point what is a problem is if those production measures are done in a way that there is slavery involved and that the environment is going completely down to the drain so that fashion has been coming cheaper and that more people get access to Fashion no problem so what we need to do as a European market and what we are doing is that we set
• 373:00 - 373:30 constraints on what we accept as what we find acceptable in the production of that because then practically we can use regulatory elements to ensure that the environment doesn't go into waste and that slavery is not used to that and then it's fine companies need to compete to create cheap fashion as long as it's done without harming the environment in which we live and I think that should be the way that we look at it we shouldn't blame the companies but we should very much blame our governments and Regulatory sets to allow this and I
• 373:30 - 374:00 think that's what we should work on it's a wider issue essent invent vented is yeah yeah it it like I shouldn't go out and say that other companies are are evil I should say like look I need to very smartly think which politicians I'm going to vote into power and very clearly show them that I don't like this and I think that that's what we can do then the second element is if you know that certain fashion is produced in an unethical way then you the best thing of voting that you can do is not buy it and
• 374:00 - 374:30 and in that way those companies will not exist so you have your own responsibility plus your Dem ratic responsibility to vote for people who will take care of this and voice your voice that you don't like it meanwhile just chop on Vinted until the regulation is adjusted y sounds good um [Applause] karolina so looking to the Future how do
• 374:30 - 375:00 you see the sort of the future of European tech companies evolving in the coming years I think specifically in the with the idea of changing consumer habits for the better yes so I'm a little bit biased on this topic because you know I've been investing in technology for 16 17 years and so I always felt that technology can really change the world and there's been really so many different shifts of this right and again it depends what you do with the technology and and all of that um
• 375:00 - 375:30 and I still very much believe that right and I'm I'm glad that Thomas talked about AI before I had to um because no one can have a panel I'll talk about AI um but I think fundamentally you know what technology allows people to do is to get things faster better cheaper and then for all of us to spend time solving more interesting problems as opposed to the more boring problems right um and I think that that's you know in a very positive world I think that's you know what AI will eventually help us do um so
• 375:30 - 376:00 that's the that's my hopeful view um of the world yeah I was going to ask if there was one thing we should be looking out for in the in this in terms of Innovations would you say AI is that thing yeah I look I think AI is a an enabling Force um and I think there's lots of different trends that play into everything um I think what I'm hopeful for is that you continue to have great entrepreneurs that want to solve problems that improve people's lives
• 376:00 - 376:30 right um and I think that's maybe one of the points that we're going to get to um but uh you know the world politically somehow feels like it's in less of an ESG you know climate place than it perhaps was um but I think that the great minds of the world um can prove that doing good is good business in the way that Vinted has proven that it's a company that grows enormously quickly that's enormously profitable um and is
• 376:30 - 377:00 of course you know transforming you know the the planet so that's you know what I hope people do with with AI turbocharge that yeah absolutely and Thomas I mean looking ahead over the next 10 years where would you love to see Vinted what's next for the company yeah so I I hope us to build a company that can really change the way people consume H if if we look at Europe and we compare ourselves to other continents like the us then it's kind of shameful how far we
• 377:00 - 377:30 are behind the US generated I think they build it seven companies that became worth more than a trillion we created not one company in that same time period that is worth more than 100 billion so I think what we really as Europe we need to take this serious we need to really aim to build companies that become bigger than 10 billion 15 billion 100 billion we need to have very very strong technology businesses that operate globally to ensure that we can bring tax revenues into our continent to build the
• 377:30 - 378:00 strong institutes that we need to protect ourselves to generate energy to educate ourselves and to keep ourselves safe I think that that that's one of the key things that we need to do so I hope that with v Vinted we will build an ecosystem with a payment company shipping company that is global that can bring real value to the continent and proper jobs amazing well watch the space it's all very exciting um thank you so much for joining me guys um thank you thank you you
• 378:00 - 378:30 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]
• 378:30 - 379:00 now what better way to finish web Summit 2024 than by having one of the greatest sports stars Portugal has ever produced after coming up through the ranks in Benfica Manchester City swooped in to buy the coveted Defender for an eye
• 379:00 - 379:30 watering amount he's since gone to win four Premier League titles titles and the Champions League to talk about what it takes to make a difference on and off the pitch please welcome in conversation with hope King from axus lesbon zones Ruben [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Diaz
• 379:30 - 380:00 wow hello everyone it's so great to see you um lots of fans already lined up which is not a surprise of course he looks like a very big press conference well I I guarantee this will be more fun than a press conference uh web Summit lesbian it's so great to see you how wonderful has this week been I am so happy to be here to close out the event and the week with Reuben there's a lot of pressure on us you know to bring the energy but you're used to pressure
• 380:00 - 380:30 are you not yeah yeah I kind of assume so and yeah we need to finish a big well how do you deal with pressure let's start there because I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurs maybe who are TR starting out they have to think about pressure all the time and you deal with pressure all the time on the field and off the field yeah well it's a whole life uh dealing with it and uh it just becomes part of you um it's it's the life and uh maybe early ages you still complain about it but at some point you start missing it cuz it's just part of
• 380:30 - 381:00 the game it's part of getting you uh on your best level and uh you just embrace it it becomes part of all of it and it's sort of just at a certain level for you always so it's like the norm almost you almost don't even feel it yeah well I guess that if you get good enough at what you do whatever you might do uh it's because you've managed to master that pressure I know you've been on International break but you've been traveling to London you spoke at the house of Parliament and you talked about anti-bullying why is that message so important for you to deliver well I
• 381:00 - 381:30 guess it it goes within if uh if if you have influence power you make sure you use it wisely if not might as well not have it so um an bullying I guess he and especially the way uh me and my team saw it uh already related as well with education um and we felt like it was the the right moment to start and and uh and push and try and start to make a difference yeah so it's anti-bullying week in the UK you spoke with students
• 381:30 - 382:00 as well what did you hear from them what are struggling with well it was mostly about kind of me sharing uh my my view on it and um one of the main questions was Ruben have you dealt with bullying yourself and um that's not really the case I I've never had a really bad experience only the usual when you want to become a top performance uh athlete uh you always have your struggles you always have people telling you that you're not good enough and uh so on so
• 382:00 - 382:30 on but for me it was more about seeing it right next to me uh so often and and kind of having to to stand up for it and having to take a decision of okay will I accept it and just let it go or will I eventually uh start to intervene and obviously on the right way cuz I'm a person that uh likes to resolve things uh through words uh but when the time was right to try and have a conversation with the person that was doing that
• 382:30 - 383:00 bullying um to someone that maybe was not ready to to fight back and um when someone feels they're in that that position of power why push it why why don't understand the situation and and address it correctly yeah I think the platform of anti-bullying sometimes is always associated with younger kids right or school children but Bullying happens all the time even as adults you deal with this in the locker room what are some of the words that you use how
• 383:00 - 383:30 do you deescalate a situation when you come in and you want to stop The Bullying yeah well it goes from everywhere uh you can be like you said and maybe more often uh young kids cuz also they're not uh as prepared as they could to to resist it and to fight it m but but also even today uh at least in my environment of work um especially with um with um social media and and all of it the online abuse it's uh it's
• 383:30 - 384:00 obviously a situation that happens and at the end uh I'm one person that believes a lot in in fighting it on your own with yourself because at the end of the day you have to do it for yourself you have to to do what you have to do and survive your environment uh but indeed then uh I think this is the moment when someone when when an individual has that power within himself to to be in the position in which I can see that I am it's not just about me surviving it's also about me trying to help others and try and be a voice and
• 384:00 - 384:30 and stand again against it and you set an example you have some a big platform you have so many followers how do you deal with bullying on your own social media you know after a game or something I mean do you turn off the comments do you turn off your app do you turn off your phone well I would consider I'm very good at ignoring it um also it all starts at home the influence you have at home the comfort and the love you have at home and home for me has always been the escape room um but then also um how how much
• 384:30 - 385:00 you believe in your person purpose cuz in the end your purpose the reason why you're doing it is the one thing that keeps you going and uh in moments of stress in moments in which people are trying to bring you down you always have to remember why you're doing it and uh then just an inner force uh within you comes comes out and you keep performing you keep resisting it until you break it and uh people maybe understand that they they have no effect on you and um yeah I think for me that's always been the way
• 385:00 - 385:30 uh but yeah it's definitely not an easy one to to deal with sometimes I love that message if you know what your purpose is and you keep true to that and if you keep that as your North Star you can ignore everything else now you don't have a lot of off time downtime and you're making time to talk about anti-bullying how do you manage your time I mean I think we're going to talk a little bit about your your schedule coming up but just in general do you have any tips or tricks on managing your own schedule it is very difficult uh so even just now
• 385:30 - 386:00 um the the way we manag to to get the um the initiative of the anti-bullying was also related with the international break uh obviously then I got injured and that hope uh even the fact that I'm here today how are you feeling by the way I'm getting better I'm getting better good okay I think everyone wants to know so yeah hopefully hopefully soon I'll be back good uh but even the fact that I'm here today it's because of that uh window that open uh because of my injury but it's usually not easy to to flow around it to fly around it because
• 386:00 - 386:30 also then it has to do with a lot uh traveling wise we're not very flexible uh in football and uh obviously then the moment the momentum of of the team um it's always something to consider and to know when you need to shut yourself down and just work and not be talking too much or when it's the moment to actually try and make a difference so yeah how do you decompress after a game how do you relax what's your go-to habit or or
• 386:30 - 387:00 ritual well I guess the um I'm just a very home person so for me to be home watching my movie listening to my my my music uh but especially obviously these are the things I end up doing but it's more being around my parents my brother uh the comfort of uh just not caring about um pleasing anyone I'm just in my comfort zone and uh that for me is is a very important space it has always been it's also a place in
• 387:00 - 387:30 which I know I will always receive good advice and it's a place in which I know I'll be I'll be I'll be able to open up and uh and get to good conclusions even though sometimes I'll disagree but it's a space in which I can have a conversation and sometimes he works he almost works as talking to a psychologist well I mean it sounds it sounds like you have a great support system at home and you've been talking about that a lot which is which is really I think a good message for everyone to to think about when you talked about anti-bullying and having people at home you can talk to I'm also
• 387:30 - 388:00 curious just in general about time because there's been a lot of conversations around whether or not footballers are being overplayed with the schedules extending I think there was one estimate that says by the next season if a team uh in an leading team looks to their entire season they could play up to 86 games 86 um and that finishes in in that next season is that too many should there be
• 388:00 - 388:30 a limit to the number of games and matches that you play yeah well if you if you ask my my personal opinion it definitely should cuz um you end up talking about performance and uh to to make sure you have the best performance you need to make sure that the athletes are safe and um if you really ask me uh at the moment in time I don't think everyone really cares about the athletes everyone cares about the financial profit and I
• 388:30 - 389:00 understand it it is what it is and uh that's the the world we live in and football is so special because everyone wants to see it all the time and we understand it it's it's out of love as well but in the end we we all are very uh demanding with ourselves we're all professionals and very ambitious and when you set a task on us we want to do it and we want to break it but now the task comparing to the past is getting very much on a different on a different
• 389:00 - 389:30 Z one you can't really keep up because and especially this season I think it will be it will be the the craziest one so far uh we don't even really know what to expect especially uh with the extra competition at the end of the season the club World Cup we don't really know what to expect of it but yes uh it will go I think like everything else at least in my life and I think everyone's uh day by day and uh and see how it goes but definitely I believe it's something we need to address because if people want a
• 389:30 - 390:00 good show out of the love for the sport we we need to care about about the athletes and the the legs can keep going without stopping we I don't even know if if we'll have any any downtime uh this season and I think this is the most worrying because you give us enough time off to refresh uh to stop stop start going G little by little and be ready to go again and obviously we'll give you the best show you you have had but if you stop giving us that time then it's not one season two seasons it's a whole
• 390:00 - 390:30 season it's a whole season just all together you said everyone should care more about the physical health of the players does that include fans should fans be more concerned about your health and maybe also demand fewer matches what is the right number do you think if it's not 86 is it 50 is it 60 what do you think well uh I won't be talking about the right number I I will only say that uh talking about the past we have a standard and uh now we're just going way
• 390:30 - 391:00 over that standard and uh I think that's that's the point obviously it's always it's always going to be demanding and uh we love it and we love to exceed ourselves uh but I don't think it's so much about obviously I believe the fans understand and uh the fans want a good show and obviously they want numbers and games and they want to be watching it all the time but at the end of the day I believe that if you really had a conversation with a number of fans they would understand the question but here I think it's more centralized on the
• 391:00 - 391:30 players uh because the players are the are the ones that go and perform obviously we understand all the industry around it but in the end it's uh it's our bodies and uh we want to do and give the best show and the best performance we can but people need to understand that we need to rest we need to breathe in order to do that how does everyone feel should we have fewer or at least yes okay we have some um there you go so we have some fans who
• 391:30 - 392:00 care one of your teammates um said actually that there might be no other option but to strike would you advocate for a strike well it's one of them obviously when you talk about it it's important to be together and do it together but it's all it's like all Every Other Extreme situation um if at some point we do need to raise our voices and we manage to do it together maybe we will uh we'll we we don't know the future we'll see uh
• 392:00 - 392:30 what's coming like I said I think right now everyone is very focused on doing the day by day uh but yeah it's definitely something that will cost our bodies and uh in due time um I believe uh we'll have to address it seriously well you're a true leader on the pitch and off and I think your voice matters on this so I think it was important for us to have that conversation and you know you talk a lot about taking your job seriously having it be very demanding have you thought about what you might do after your
• 392:30 - 393:00 soccer career have you given any thought to I don't know is is Beckham David Beckham somebody that you'd want a career that you'd want uh to to achieve after something of that kind of portfolio career have you given that thought yeah well I'm not really sure about owning a club but um more in the sense of preparing it yes um and not even about um specifically having already my mind and I've been thinking about this since I was 17 18 so you
• 393:00 - 393:30 already wow okay uh but it was never a thought of I want to do something specifically uh it was more in order to to prepare and have all the options in the world and then because it's I think it won't ever be uh accurate for me to be thinking now exactly about what I want to do after I finish my career it would always be very random still and um what I do want to do is build up whatever I'm going to build
• 393:30 - 394:00 up based on what I what my beliefs are and then at the end of it have all those options open for me if he will be a manager if you'll be I don't know there's a million options uh within football and even outside football um and uh I want to make sure that I'm ready for all of them I want to open my way and the best timing to do so is now and like I've told you I've been thinking about this for a long time and I think the the main question for me is that I I finally found the person the
• 394:00 - 394:30 team uh that will help me to to build build up my to my ideas so you've been thinking about this for over 10 years at that point why did you already know it was important to start thinking about it at that time well I guess it's just everyone's mind everyone's different and um I've always been a little bit very calculated in terms of preparing my future and knowing my options and uh it was always something that that gave me pleasure uh if I'm being honest with you uh also
• 394:30 - 395:00 like uh the financial world like learning about it as a young footballer uh when you start uh having all this money and knowing how to to to to use it in the best way obviously never cutting cutting down on your passions and I think that's an important one to assume and own it uh but yes definitely look forward and um and I'm always the person that says I only live my life day by day yes but in these things you have to look forward and if you have big big Ambitions if you
• 395:00 - 395:30 have uh big plans for for yourself and for your was um I think you should prepare I kind of always and this was also a very big Drive uh for myself uh growing up uh and in those more more difficult times uh while while making yourself through my Academy in my my my football World at some point in in a moment of struggle there there would always be a feeling of uh in my mind coming through just I've I've just been
• 395:30 - 396:00 I've just been born for something bigger than myself and this was a present feeling for since since I can remember and maybe I'm still to find out the right answer for that but for sure I want to explore it and I want to go deeper and I have Ambitions and things I care about and uh like I like I said to you before I still don't know I have no clue what I'll do when I finish my career but I I want to make sure that I keep on digging and finding answers that's amazing I mean you're so thoughtful about this how how have you started to build that bridge I know you're working with nebula you're trying
• 396:00 - 396:30 things here and there what are the things that you're EXP experimenting with well one thing about nebula uh I I had had my experiences before um and it was always kind of a relationship working with a company uh in that sense um it was always kind of an experience of okay let's start working we have this project for you obviously who you are your personality and let's see where we can start making profit out of it and obviously it is what it is uh it's
• 396:30 - 397:00 interesting for both parts but I was always interested in something else even though I tried because I had to had my experiences some good some bad it's part of life but I guess nebula and more specifically Pao Paulo um and he was he was the main driver on all of this because I had my vision and at some point a friend um my lawyer actually he he pointed pointed Paulo uh to towards me uh because he just felt listen I'm
• 397:00 - 397:30 not even pushing a friend I just really believe you see very much Alik and uh and we had our first conversation and um in the end the way we connected and the way we start working we just said it all right forget about profit forget about any contracts or any brands or whatever forget about all of that let's focus on you let's brainwash who you are and let's go deep let's cave and see all the things that are in your mind that all the things that since you like you say since uh you're 18 years old were going
• 397:30 - 398:00 through your mind and I think that is the kind of way to do it because now I feel finally like I'm building my way the way I am and uh in a very genuine way one I will always be able to support because it's just who I am I'm not pretending to like or support anything that it's not something I believe in so yeah what are some of your favorite projects that you've worked on so far that you hope to expand on in the future well I would focus obviously
• 398:00 - 398:30 antibullying is already a part of it but I would focus myself on education education is a big drive for me um and any kind of education in particular I can go many ways but I think one right now that uh is very much in my mind is that soon enough we might be lacking uh high quality teachers and uh I think something that's something to to worry about and uh something I definitely will want to dedicate myself to and if you had to pick if you know
• 398:30 - 399:00 we're at a Convention of innovators if you had to pick take another job right now what would you pick oh I have no idea would you be CEO of a company does does that is that appealing to you well I've always had this very natural leadership uh but it would always have to be driven into a project that I believe in if I had the characteristics to maybe be a CEO I don't know uh life would tell me and the experience itself would tell
• 399:00 - 399:30 me but I don't know it would it would have to be it's difficult it's the typical question everyone asks a footballer what would you do if you were not a footballer but it's just just to to say that I would be very easygoing to do the simplest thing uh I could be doing um in order to prepare my future and my family's future um but yeah I would I would definitely be very motivated to do something that meant something for me well we're going to be
• 399:30 - 400:00 looking very carefully at the clues for your education Ventures I think that's something that we're learning new today let's get to the last part of our conversation some of the more fun questions that I wanted to share with you and and the audience um one of them it's you love music I hear uh EDM is a genre that you like I spoke with the CEO earlier at the summit the CEO of etsy and he compared using generative AI to make art to EDM he said it's humans
• 400:00 - 400:30 using machines to create art do you agree and how do you feel about the way that AI is impacting a lot of jobs including education well it's always a 50/50 uh I guess it's a lot of good and a lot of bad of bad and uh at the end of the day you have to wait and see if it's doing more good than bad obviously I don't know the specifics of how good and bad uh we're talking about but it's the way forward and we have to adapt of course
• 400:30 - 401:00 um about my love for music I've actually just recently uh kind of accomplished a little ambition of mine oh uh I had these big three anima lud Ai and Max Richa and uh I get to see I got to see um max Richa live and uh it was it was very special that's awesome in the in the very little time you have somehow you you yeah well the unfortunately uh the injury uh it kind of helped with the time it's a tricky I I don't want to say
• 401:00 - 401:30 but uh I'm glad that you got that um which trophy do you most want to hold at the end of your career that you'll be proudest to say that you got well I've won a lot by now and uh and obviously uh I think if I had to uh admire something it would be the treble season when we won the treble but I think something that will even give me more pleasure than that will be by the end of my career the feeling that I
• 401:30 - 402:00 never stopped for a second and of pursuing something and try and push myself I think it's an answer I still don't know and I will only know in the future but knowing myself I I I I'll will be very proud um to know that I I was able to keep that consistency cuz for me consistency in a world of stress in a world of high performance is the the one most difficult thing so if I'm able to to conquer that consistency
• 402:00 - 402:30 along the ears and obviously all the the struggle it will be in my mind and everyone next to me supporting me I think that's someone's biggest achievement and then also maybe finding out the one thing I felt like I was born born to do maybe finding out that would probably be a big one as well I love that if you had to pick another sport okay if you don't have another job if you had to pick another sport another sport yeah which which sport would you pick to
• 402:30 - 403:00 play being very honest with you when I was young I was very good at many sports and my dad at some point he just said to me listen just stop because you like this is impossible you have to choose one and be very good at one because if not you might be very good at all of them but you won't be excellent in any of them so yeah but obviously football was always my main drive but I don't know I've done karate when I was young and I used to win my fights I'm not so karate would be your second choice if it was no I wouldn't think so what your choice maybe I don't know
• 403:00 - 403:30 I'm not tall enough but maybe basketball I used to love it as well okay I I think you probably be very good we're out of time Ruben thank you so much um but before we conclude this amazing web Summit in Lisbon um web Summit has a special award for you and I am really really pleased to present and to invite back onto the stage the mayor of Lisbon and the CEO of websummit Patty Cosgrave [Applause]
• 403:30 - 404:00 [Music] [Applause] [Music] congratulations um thank you hope what a week it has been and what a fitting way this is to finish it by honoring one of Lisbon's finest athletes who has had such an impact on the international stage mayor can I ask you to do the honors so thank you so much it's a a
• 404:00 - 404:30 real honor for me as the mayor of Lisbon to be here and to be here also in the name of the people of Lisbon because I was so inspired to hear from Reuben Ruben you're not just a champion and a winner I think that you are the definition of a leader and you are a definition of a leader that relates to so many of the young people here because first you are the kind of person that whatever happens you always lead by example I mean you arrive earlier you
• 404:30 - 405:00 work harder you you do your work as an example to others and that's so inspiring for all these generation the second thing is that you know when if I would be in trouble I would love to have you next by me because you are you know Hemmingway used to say grace and the pressure and that's you know you show this grace and the pressure all the time as a player as a man and as an example to others and finally I think that like so many of you entrepreneurship it's a
• 405:00 - 405:30 about this leadership of never giving up and um Ruben is that example so in the name of web Summit but also in the name of the people of Lisbon Reuben thank you for your leadership thank you for being a amazing Champion but more than that being an amazing person thank you very much man that's for you thank
• 405:30 - 406:00 congratulations uh Ruben to all of you whove spent the last four days maybe more in Lisbon thank you so much to for coming to web Sumit 2024 it's been an absolute pleasure thank you in particular to the mayor who's been an incredible support to me for more than a decade and is a an absolute incredible leader of this city and a Visionary thank you one and all safe home and see you in 2025 [Music]
• 406:00 - 406:30 w [Music]
• 406:30 - 407:00 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
• 407:00 - 407:30 you look like me you look a little like I know and I can tell you how this is I'll be in your head all weekend sh and butf