Introducing Matt Hocking, Co-founder and CEO of WellSaid Labs 

Sara:

I'm Sara Lindquist from FUSE. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the FUSE family to date.

Alana (WellSaid AI-Voice):

Today, you'll hear from Matt Hocking, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of WellSaid Labs. Join us as we discuss a few topics about the business, how it's been going and growing, and how their AI voice product - which is generating the voice you're hearing right now - is the future of voice content creation. 

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Thanks for being here, Matt. It's awesome to be with you. I appreciate you taking the time and I'm excited for you to share a bit about the WellSaid story. So to kick things off, it'd be great if you could just share the quick overview on what WellSaid is and how it's serving customers today.

Matt:

Well, at WellSaid Labs, we create life-like synthetic voice from the voices of real people for real business use cases. So essentially what we do is, we train deep learning models to speak like a particular speaker, speaking in a certain way for a specific use case. So for example, content creators, product designers and innovation teams can essentially create voice on-demand and at scale.

Sara:

So, what you're saying is, we could have actually just used WellSaid to record this entire interview?

Matt:

100%, if you'd been able to clone my voice.

Sara:

We'll have to do that next! And Matt, walk me back in time a little bit to when you and the team were initially building WellSaid. What was that key discovery moment where you were like, "Oh wow, this is a huge opportunity?"

Matt:

I'm a content creator by trade. And so when I first heard some of the work that my co-founder Michael had been doing in the speech synthesis space and seeing the absolutely unreal results that he was able to get in terms of realism with the synthetic voices that he was able to produce, it was at that point in time that I knew that it could help a lot of people that I've seen struggle with voice content production in the past.

Sara:

Yeah. And so what are most content creators doing today to create their voice content?

Matt:

Usually when you're looking at the voice content production workflow, it is generally a very static and not a very iterative process. Meaning, a script needs to be first produced, signed off on, and talent needs to be available. The talent then gets one chance to read that content perfectly. And if anything goes wrong, that entire process starts all over again. At the speed at which content is being produced today, that process obviously needs to be more iterative and more available when new content needs to be produced.

Sara:

Got it. That's super helpful. How would you articulate why your team that you've assembled - I know it's growing - why is your team the team to do this?

Matt:

Yeah, not only do we have the technical know-how to obviously produce synthetic voice at a level that's never been available before, but as well as that, we just have a team of very diverse individuals that are super passionate about bringing this technology to life and helping real people. This is more than just an AI play. This is about building a real product for real people, and helping people tell their stories, whether that be inside of the building in a corporate environment or outside of the building in their everyday lives.

Sara:

Love it. And as your team has been growing, being the leader of the company alongside your co-founders and other leadership, what would you say is maybe one word or few words that sums up the culture at WellSaid?

Matt:

When we think about our team and what we're trying to do here, we obviously understand that we have a responsibility not only to the bigger AI industry and the industry at large when we're producing voice with the help of voice talent that we obviously partner with to create these synthetic voices, but when we look at our team and the team of people that we've assembled, we're trying to create voice for everyone here. And so the one thing that we really focus on is ensuring that everyone inside of the building has a voice. So I would say that that collaborative mentality around solving the tough problems and visualizing how we want the business to grow in the future is something that we bring everyone to table with and we all feel passionately about.

Sara:

I love that and it's poetic with what you're building. So that's great. So, Matt, my next question for you is touching on the experience being in a startup, but also being a leader. It's certainly hard work and comes with all sorts of challenges and probably unique challenges in the particular industry that you're in. So what keeps you going? And maybe even perhaps in those moments where others may have called it quits?

Matt:

Yeah, I think that this is obviously an opportunity where I feel as though the technology is necessary to bring to the world. The technology has gone through a huge step function recently. And enabling more people to tell their stories with synthetic voice, just means that more voice content will be accessible to more people. And so there's something there that obviously drives me in terms of, I feel as though we have a necessary part to play in the way that we interface with technology in the future, and as well as that, when I look at the team and I see how passionate they are about doing the right thing and bringing this product to market in the right way, it's definitely one of those things that I want to hold hands with them and move forward in that way and support them in their dreams of bringing this to life as well.

Sara:

Well, I love that. That's great. So in closing here, one final question for you. What right now do you need more of? How can anyone listening in help or get involved?

Matt:

Yeah, we need more people to come and join our vision. So when it comes down to it, we're hiring the team that's going to bring this technology to life and hopefully help a lot of people along the way. And so whether that be from amazing engineers that have a real passion for building real products for real people through to sales people, through to people to help us steer the ship to a certain extent, we're hiring across the board and I feel as though that's probably one of the most integral parts of what we're focused on at the moment.

Sara:

Absolutely. And what's the best way for people to get in touch?

Matt:

The easiest way for you to get in contact with us is obviously to check out the job postings on our webpage and/or hit up hello@wellsaidlabs.com.

Sara:

Yeah, if you're interested in getting involved, also feel free to reach out to us at FUSE and we'll put you in touch with the team. Thank you so much, Matt. I appreciate you sharing the story and am excited to watch you and the team shift the paradigm of how voice content gets created!

Matt:

Great.

Alana (WellSaid AI-Voice):

Be sure to visit the WellSaid Labs website and try it out. You can find my AI voice "Alana" right within the studio product. For job postings, be sure to check the careers page at the bottom of WellSaid's website homepage. You will also be able to access via the FUSE website. Thanks for joining and see you on the next one.