Walking with Victor Riparbelli, Co-Founder of Synthesia. He built a $4 billion dollar AI company at 31.

0:00Okay, tell us, what are you building? I'm building a company called Synthesia, which is the world's largest AI video platform for businesses. Okay, explain it to a four-year-old. Okay, so in 2025, everyone want to watch and listen to content, right? That's why we're filming this. Yes. But it's really difficult to make video content, especially if you're a big business, because you have to use a camera, actors, studios, a lot of stuff. Yeah. And instead, we've built a product where with AI, you can generate the video. Yeah, what's been the biggest risk so far that you've taken? We've taken a lot of risk.

0:25I think the biggest risk was just like betting on a technology and a space that in 2017, when we started the company, was very, very non-consensus. The idea that AI could like generate content was very French, right? So when we went out and tried to raise... Oh, French. I don't think it was very French. I was like, what? Okay, carry on. No, very French idea, right? So impossible to raise the first rounds of capital. No one believed in it. And frankly, you know, it was kind of crazy at the time, but I think, you know, we managed to kind of stay alive long enough for the technology to actually work and catch up.

1:01And that meant we're in a prime position to capture the space. Because you basically did AI before AI was AI. That's true. So when you were trying to pitch to investors, were they like, what the hell? I told people in 2017, in 10 years, you can make a Hollywood film on your laptop, but nothing else but your imagination, which today sounds a lot less crazy. How did you know that? I think, so I met this professor who is my co-founder in the company. Yeah. And he'd done a research paper kind of demonstrating like the very, very early phase stages of this technology working. And I looked at that and just thought, you know, if you look at the slope of like how quickly AI is developing, there's a pretty good chance that you're actually going to be able to do it in 10 years' time.

1:38What's been the hardest day so far? I mean, the first four years of the company were... Day? I'm joking, I'm joking. The first four years. The first four years, we really had to be very steadfast in our own belief and not listen to much what the world and investors were telling us. Which is crazy. That is hard, right? But I think resilience is probably one of the most important skills to have as an entrepreneur and the ability to think independently and take a stance that might be unpopular, right? The more unpopular the stance is, assuming you're right, the bigger the opportunity is. Did you ever doubt yourself?

2:09Of course I did. But I think you also, I think you need to have kind of like a naive self-belief in some ways. but also be very multiple, which is a strange balance of being both very stubborn, but also very like open-minded. But of course I doubt myself, you know, I think everybody does. I would hope everyone does. So what's your life motto? My life motto? Yeah. Get rich and I try and... Is that 50 cent? It's not my life's motto. No, I don't care that much about 50. Money is fun, but that's not what it is. Really? I don't know if it's a motto, but I think for me, I'm just, I've always been driven by my curiosities.

2:39I think life's just too short to waste it on. Bad jobs, you don't like. people that you know you don't have a real relationship with shitty music shitty art like i don't know i just want to make the most of my time while i'm here i love that if you weren't doing this what would you be doing well i always wanted to be a musician that was my dream in my teenage years i love electronic music so i probably would be doing something like that i still hope to be doing that at some point i feel like you would be a really good dj i am i am a great dj are you are a dj do you do like in my heartbeats but do you do in my club can i come see you play can we You can actually come see me.

3:12You can come see me play next month. What? Are you headlining? No, you're joking. No, I'm not headlining. I'm actually playing. Where? Where? Where? It's a secret. It's my alter ego. Oh, secret location. Drop it in the link below. How do you like to celebrate? So obviously you've had some great wins so far. How do you celebrate them? I don't think I do anything like groundbreaking. It's kind of weird because from the outside in, you see all the headlines, right? Yeah. You raise a lot of money. I knew people. All the good stuff that happens. but like kind of by the time that that's public information it's old news right in reality i think the experience is like every day you take one step forward or one step backwards some weeks you take only steps backwards sometimes you take step forward and so i think when you at least for me my co-founder i think for better for worse you become very numb have you had like a crazy material thing that you bought have you ever had a blowout actually not really your shoes are quite sick yeah they're very expensive actually what are you wearing today i've never done a fit check but i You feel like it's appropriate to do a fit check.

4:11Hike, sneaks, sunflower jeans, t-shirt, make-a-watch. Home is the one thing I think is like always worth overspending on. Yeah, shout out Georgia Byrne. Yeah, exactly. Shout out Georgia. What has been the most embarrassing story about you so far building this company? I think one of the things that were like in the early days, like getting turned down by investors is kind of embarrassing. especially because the more you get turned down the more you um the worse you get a pitching right because you kind of lose faith in yourself and to remember like in particular in the very very early days me and stephanie my co-founder um we're pitching these two funds and i just remember giving like the worst pitch why what made it so bad i think i was just nervous was like falling over my words and we were like super we're really pressured at this point so we were pitching aston kutcher's venture fund and they were kind of like the last shot in the barrel we actually thought they were going to do it so we were like pumped up for this call i mean okay let's close them let's like get in the book right i'm open this call and i just fucking bomb it i go so bad and you know you know when you vomit where would you like the company to be in 20 years i think if we can become one of the companies that defines this new era of like ai video i'd be very proud of that i think you already have we already have yeah but i think there's still chapters to go and And the one idea that's always had me the most interested was, you know, there's this thing when we invent new media technology as humans, always invent new media formats that are native to those technologies, right?

5:36Yeah. For example, like social media content, that's kind of a derivative of smartphone cameras, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really like you're doing right now if you had to have a broadcast come up. And so throughout history, we've always seen these like new media formats pop up that are native to technology. Yeah. AI videos can be the same. Video today is like a broadcast. Yeah. Everybody watches the same video on YouTube. but very soon those videos got to be interactive like you talk to them they got to be personalized to you and it's going to feel more like almost using an app than watching a video yeah and that's the thing i really like if we can want to figure out the right like way to put that together in a way that's like fun and engaging and and um it's better than normal video for some things then it would be wow and what was the like aha moment where you guys were like wait this is actually something really big this has legs do you remember it was end of 2020 when we first launched like the the v1 of the product yeah that ended up taking off it just instantly been viral we were sitting at this point we're like eight people i think but everyone's just like flooding into the website making all these videos we're sitting looking over like someone actually puts their credit card down it's just 30 like dancing on the table that was definitely like a very special moment and i think i think it's one of those things in in some businesses i think we've been combination of of smart and lucky it's not like a slow take off that was that was really fun what is another startup founder that you look up to another founder um after so many one is obviously controversial given his uh last couple of years i think if you if you put political stuff aside you're saying elon elon yeah there's no one that's not said elon okay out of 36 interviews it's elon but there's just like look no i know i know you can you can dislike him for other things but there's no doubt that he's the greatest entrepreneur of our generation you know what's a daily ritual that keeps you sane as a founder i'm i'm a terrible sleeper i'm terrible like all the hell i do go to the gym but i'd say for me actually for me the things that i was i listened to a lot of music every day going to work yeah i bike to work every day and like biking to work listening to like good music setting kind of the tone for the day so you cycle and listen to music isn't that quite dangerous to have your headphones in probably don't tell my mom yeah i was going to say do not try that at home how do you know when to switch off i don't i don't know don't really think about it like that i mean you kind of think when you're a founder you're like always on i mean late in the evenings i love kind of like the late hours of the night unfortunately it's not very good for your for your sleep Not very Brian Johnson of you.

8:11I think there's something about, like, you know, when the rest of the world is sleeping. Like, you know, you're not going to get any, like, messages. You're not going to get any emails. You have some time for yourself. Yeah. I really like that. I try to, like, every day spend at least one hour, one and a half hour or more than that on something that's not worth, like reading or making music or other kind of interests I have. Oh, so that's your, like, escape. That's definitely my, I mean, making music is my escape, not because I release it, but just seeing and getting lost in that. You should release it.

8:36But, like, I will at some point. But for me, it's very meditative just to sit for two hours and get lost in it. I think you want to find those things where you feel like you're in flow and you forget everything else that's going on around you. And for me, that's music. For other people, it's running. For other people, it's playing sports. Everyone has their own thing. Yours is music. It means music. You should DJ your IPO. That would be so sick. That's where you announce your first headline set. Can you imagine? I'm not sure what the public market is going to think about. Yeah. I'll do the marketing for it.

9:07it'll be so good what would your advice be to someone starting now i think there's a lot right i think depends a lot when your ambition isn't what you want to do my number one thing is always like don't try to sit down at a table and like think of ideas yeah that's a terrible way to come up with ideas take a job get a hobby do something become an expert on something and hopefully the ideas will like come to you like sitting and trying to come up with ideas generally very bad The other thing I would say is that, again, depending on who you are, but now AI is completely consensified. You're not going to find a single person on the planet who doesn't think that AI is going to transform everything and blah, blah, blah.

9:45Yeah, yeah. It's noisy. There's lots of opportunity, for sure. Yeah. Personally, I'm more into more fringe ideas. I would look beyond what's popular right now, about what you think will happen in like three, four, five years. Like what you did. Yeah. Predict the future. Predict the future. And you'll succeed. Exactly. I think it's generally helpful as an entrepreneur. You need to have a really good bullshit filter. And that's probably one of the most important things, actually. I always try, and this can be an annoying problem when you're like my friend or my family, but I always assume that most ideas, most beliefs, most technologies, they are kind of wrong.

10:24If you went back 50 years in time, everything people believed, right? Moral beliefs or scientific beliefs, religious beliefs, whatever. or all these things change, the technologies we use change, but we all have this tendency to think that we're living at the end of history. And so I think when people postulate something, but there is whatever belief that's in vogue at some point in time, we should assume it's gonna disappear at some point. It's gonna be replaced by something else. But as humans, we're very inclined to want to believe whatever everyone else is saying. We wanna be part of the tribe.

10:56We wanna believe the same things as everyone. We want the same things as everyone else. But I think if you can try and dial just a little bit, just be skeptical we read something in the news be skeptical if someone tells you something you default skeptical instead of default being oh that's right no I think that's a fault skeptical yes what's the worst piece of advice you've ever got most advice you get is bad I think it's it depends a lot on what you do I should say my company was we did something very new right yeah but most of the advice you get from people is from people who have no deep context of your business yeah of your vision and so I think you should be very careful about taking advice the people should take advice from people you'd swap seats with right which I think as a farmer should be very few people that's a great phrase the first thing you think of that no if you could go back and do one thing differently I would have studied computer science in I would have studied some kind of stem degree I just think that if it's not a stem degree it's not very valuable if you're going to go to university for it i think you want to learn something that's real hard facts and you know ultimately that goes back to the laws of physics which is ultimately computer science is kind of things derived from right yeah i think those are things that won't change over time yeah there are very few things in in the world that won't change yeah and learning and understanding those i think is is probably one of the best toolkits you can have it's a great way to end What's your favourite piece of clothing in a wardrobe?

12:31You have to answer that and then we're going to end. That's a good question. I like these jeans. They're very cool. Okay, give me a hug. Thank you!