Signal Dialogues #02 | Wispr Flow CEO Tanay Kothari on Beating Apple & Google at Voice

So you started whisper four and a half years back. Little bit about the early

years back. Little bit about the early days of the journey.

When I first saw the Iron Man movie, I wanted to build Jarvis. And so me and a friend of mine built what was then one of the world's first voice assistants. 2

and a2 million users 6 months and then Google actually shut us down cuz they didn't like what we were doing.

Feels like one of your earliest insights was that these organizations are just set up wrong.

Organizations are set up wrong. Whenever

somebody asked me like why can't Apple build this? I mean like of course they

build this? I mean like of course they can from a resources standpoint but you need to build a different organization for that. In consumer AI particularly,

for that. In consumer AI particularly, how much does the quality of these first thousand users matter? I

actually don't think it matters in consumer at all cuz in consumer if we try to build a mass market product, I fundamentally believe that's how you die. But my key goal is with every type

die. But my key goal is with every type of customer that we build the product for, they need to feel that this product is for people like me. How do we make this human computer interaction be as

seamless as possible? So using your devices feels like talking to a close friend.

Hi everyone, welcome again to Signal Dialogues. I'm back. This is Akrit V.

Dialogues. I'm back. This is Akrit V.

I'm the founder of Activate, India's native AI venture capital firm. We work

with young technical founders way before they're ready to start a company and invest right at inception in uh founders uh from India building uh AI companies

for India and for the world. So when we talk about uh young technical from India for the world, I think I couldn't have

had a more uh apt guest that uh fits all of those uh words in Tane uh who is uh the co-founder and CEO of Whisper Flow

which today you know feels like uh one of the most loved uh consumer AI products out there. You know, I think uh T we were we've obviously been chatting

this whole week about your journey and I feel there's so much to unpack that it just best comes from you. So why don't we start a little bit about if you had

to introduce Tanya and Whisper in 60 seconds. That's a lot.

seconds. That's a lot.

So um I grew up in Delhi for most of my life and been working on Whisper Phil for the last two years but generally been in the space for the last 18 which is what does the next generation of

personal computing look like cuz growing up when I first saw the Iron Man movie I wanted to build Jarvis and so me and a friend of mine built what was then one of the world's first voice assistants this is before Siri before Alexa to

people it just felt like magic 2 and a half million users 6 months and then Google actually shut us down because they didn't like what we were But fast forward many years, builder at

heart, uh built a number of mobile apps, web apps, and the key thing that drove all of that was whenever I saw anybody on their phone or their computer, it

just felt so effortful and so mechanical and not how I want technology to feel like at all. And so with Whisper, the key goal that we have is how do we make

this human computer interaction be as seamless as possible. So using your devices feels like talking to a close friend. Amazing. You did nothing better

friend. Amazing. You did nothing better than 60. I mean T like it's it's been so

than 60. I mean T like it's it's been so awesome uh getting to know whisper the product and you and you know one of the things that strikes me every single time

and uh most of the audience u that watches this is either founders or people who want to be founders in AI.

One of the thing that consistently strikes me about you is uh the depth right like we always talk about the depth of understanding around this

product both technology product your consumer so let's start a little bit at that how did voice happen to you and when did you like in terms of technology

and then what it what did what did it take to become what I would like to think is today 99th percentile plus in this area.

So voice interestingly was one thing I had a very strong belief in since 2008.

2008 2008 that was you told her you were what 18 that time?

No 10.

Okay 10.

I was close to 18. Sorry I forget. And

so the So you were 10 and in Delhi.

I was 10 in Delhi. I was in fifth grade.

And it really struck me where I was like what I want all I wanted was for my computer to be just like a smart friend

who I could talk to and we could just do things together. And so that was the

things together. And so that was the first inspiration for the first product we built that was voice only. And the

key idea behind voice stuck with me throughout basically now it's been 18 years. But there was a big realization

years. But there was a big realization that I had about 4 or 5 years ago when I was thinking about the next phase of technology which

is so the world we live in now everybody's glued to their phones right and we all talk about oh we want to spend less time on our screens and so on but the best solutions we have is screen

time apps and they're a band-aid to fix this problem that's otherwise not getting solved. To me, the best way you

getting solved. To me, the best way you move away from display first technologies like your phones and laptop is a voice first technology. And so the kind of world I want to build is where

you go downstairs, you're walking on the street and you see everybody just looking up. Nobody's hunched over like

looking up. Nobody's hunched over like this anymore. And so that is the key

this anymore. And so that is the key vision that we started Whisper with 4 and a half years ago.

So let's just go back to 2008 for a second right?

Yeah. In all seriousness, you were obviously in in fifth grade and I was just about finishing college.

Products existed. Products existed. So

you had Siri which was actually Siri actually came a few years after 2008 is iPhone launch.

2000 uh iPhone launch happened I think a year before 8 and then 9 was I think the app store launch something around that. So Siri

was maybe 101.

Siri was 11. Yeah.

So what was the product that existed back then? So the only thing that

back then? So the only thing that existed back then was Google's speech to text on that thing where you press the mic button and when you press the mic button and you speak and that was only on Android

phones and that only some Android phones have app.

So just doubling down a little bit on voice and my observation cuz I also come from a similar kind of uh trajectory where I started haptic thinking similar

themes.

Why do you think for the better part of eight let's say 10 10 to 23 or 24 when this started becoming popular for 13 14 years

all these big companies with so much capital so many resources the best talent just couldn't get this right and even till today I'll tell you an incident just this right now on the way

over here to the office this morning you know um I'm I use we all use whisper a thought and then you know because of muscle memory what happened is um that

uh while trying to press the whisper button instead I pressed the mic button on the keyboard.

Yeah.

Um which was the Apple dictation which is in my case Android.

Okay. Android dictation.

Yeah. Yeah. And I pressed that mic button and then I started speaking and I could instantly notice such a big difference.

Yeah. cuz you're used to using whisper and I'm not saying like any specifically any other tool but 14 years give and take large companies people and still

continue trying it just from a technology perspective like what do you think has been the unlock for industry and more specifically for whisper so this is a question I had

right cuz Apple Google all of these large companies have half a trillion dollars in their bank they have some of the best researchers like tens of thousands of them and

I had initially started building whisperers hardware because I thought everybody's of course going to solve this problem how could they not the key thing I realized when I did talk

to them and I did talk to the heads of these uh voice teams inside these orgs was it's very interesting realization that the way that structured these companies was there was a research team

that built these models and there was an engineering team that deployed these models and there was a product team that talk to the customers and so the people who are actually building these models never talk to the

users. So when I talked to the

users. So when I talked to the researchers, they said, "Oh, this problem is solved. The works great.

We've solved all the issues. We have

such good word error rates." And this is these conversations are happening even in 2024.

Even today, I'm guessing even today um there was an exec from one of these companies going around and saying like, "Oh, we've solved why is great, works really well."

that cap. So I think they did the best that they could with the information they had. But this is a fundamental

they had. But this is a fundamental thing where because your research team is just working in this black box with your benchmarks and all of them that

you've set up which are so different from how the average person uses it. And

so an average person is not going to say hi, Ark, how are you? Question one. Like

that's not what you say. Hey Ark, how's it? Um um how are you doing? That's how

it? Um um how are you doing? That's how

they talk. You ramble, you change your mind.

Is so fascinating, man. So your insight really was of course technology, but your feels like one of your earliest insights was that these organizations are just set up wrong.

Organizations are set up wrong.

Wow. And so whenever somebody asked me like why can't Apple build this, I mean like of course they can from a resources standpoint, but you need to build a different organization for that.

So your the other day also we mentioned this you know for the lack of better words I hate this term but let's just use it for simplicity your moat yeah

from the outside people may think is oh they have some great model that they've built and they have some insane technology which I suppose true but sounds like your mode has simply been

just better structure and execution for this specific problem yes and I think that's one of the reasons why I think startups can win against the large

players is because when you are just deeply obsessed with solving a specific problem, you build your whole company around to be the best person to be able to do that. And so for example, at

Whisper, our researchers are talking to the users. They are shipping new things

the users. They are shipping new things every single week. And so that research engineering product is just one person inside our company. And every single researcher is like that which is a very

different way to build an ML research org than any other company has built before. And the thing is for a product

before. And the thing is for a product you know retrospect you need it retrospectively this sounds so trivial right?

Yeah but like that and that to your point is a beauty of startups that you land into something that in hindsight feels like why does why do more people not do that?

Yeah that's amazing. Okay so fast forwarding

that's amazing. Okay so fast forwarding a little bit. So you started whisper four and a half years back.

4 and a half years back. Yeah. August of

2021.

Okay. Awesome. And uh little bit about the early days of the journey.

So this time I have like August 2021.

I'll paint a picture. GPT3 had come out.

Sorry.

Charge GPT did not exist.

Charge GPT N20.

Right. So we're before CH GPT. And the

key insight that I had is computers can finally understand natural language.

When I saw the first LLMs, uh, GPD3, GPD3, and we said, you know, okay, everybody's going to be talking to their computers in the next few years. What

are the biggest problems that nobody else is working on that we need to solve? So, I thought, okay, you need to

solve? So, I thought, okay, you need to build really good voice input. Of

course, OpenAI is going to build that.

Then, you need a really good voice assistant. Of course, Siri and Alexa are

assistant. Of course, Siri and Alexa are going to improve. Like, this is my 2021 mind. So the thing that you will need is

mind. So the thing that you will need is you want to be able to use voice when you're around other people so that you have privacy, you don't disturb them.

And so we decided to solve the problem of silent speech.

This over the next 3 years got us to build a team of about 40 people, PhDs in neuroscience, signal processing, electrical mechanical machine learning, and we actually built the

world's first thought to text device that was non-invasive. So imagine neural link but you don't need to get brain surgery. It's just a Bluetooth earpiece

surgery. It's just a Bluetooth earpiece that you wear. And we had the best people in the world. There were

professors from Ivy League schools who gave up their tenure ships to join Whisper full-time. Our chief scientists

Whisper full-time. Our chief scientists used to manage five Nobel Prize winners at Bell Labs. These were the people who we had brought together to build this.

And when it worked in June of 2024, we connected with Chad, GPT, Siri, Alexa, and they all sucked.

So, let's talk. So, how much capital had you raised by then for this?

We had raised a $21 million seed which was for this thought to text which was for this thought to text hardware device, right? So, Whisper at this time is a deep tech brain computer interface hardware company.

And what was it called?

It was called Whisper.

The product was called Whisper.

The Yeah. So, we had two SKs. There were

whisper pros and the name makes sense now because the silence.

Yes. So that's where the name came from.

And so there were the whisper pros which were headphones and whisper airs that were smaller earpieces.

Got it. So what happened when you started connecting this with? So we

started testing all these devices and we realized that they all sucked and we needed a way to go from your rambles into something that is structured and ready to send and so we built an

operating system for this called flow.

Oh wow.

And that we started using and then I had to send it to a couple of friends to test it out. So that's when I decided to package it in a desktop app and I sent it to them and I was like you know what instead of silent speech let's also make

it work with voice. So it initially did not use the microphone at all. It just

used our headphones. I added voice as an additional thing to test it out. And

these guys loved it. These two friends send it to five, send it to 10 and starting looking we have 100 users from out of nowhere.

And the biggest thing I realized like remember the problem I was telling you that we wanted to solve. How do you use it around other people? So all 40 of us used to be in an open office, right? All

sitting together. And one day I just walked in and the thing I saw is everybody had a mic on their desk like these United Nations kind of mics coming up to your mouth and they're just like

silently speaking to this to their computers and everybody in the office is doing that and that just reality slapped me in the face where it just brought me back to the problem that we were looking

to solve and I was like wow this solves it.

Wow.

Everybody in our office is using this and our hardware devices put on.

Just picture that moment right now.

Everybody's like got these like those curved mics holding up to your Yes. Exactly. And so I saw that and

Yes. Exactly. And so I saw that and that's when me and Sahed took this hard decision to pivot the company completely. And so overnight we went

completely. And so overnight we went from 40 people to four people. We were

no longer a brain computer interface hardware company. We became a consumer

hardware company. We became a consumer software company. And then we rebuilt

software company. And then we rebuilt everything from scratch. And at this point all we had was the software product. And this is 24 summer. So only

product. And this is 24 summer. So only

two years this is 2024 August 18 months a year 18 months ago we decided to make the pivot which feels like ages ago now when I think back

and so we u we did that at this time we had a 100 daily active users for this product basically your friends and who they send basically these friends and then s and I

had a conviction that we saw both of our behaviors change and that's one thing I truly believe about consumer software is the best consumer softwares create

behavior change in a way where as a person you can never go back. It

basically transforms you to a new world.

Doing that is al both incredibly hard but also if you can do that it builds an incredibly strong business. So we told our investors we actually had a lot of money in the bank. Half the money was

still there. Uh so we did the pivot not

still there. Uh so we did the pivot not because of money or investors or anything else. It was just he and I

anything else. It was just he and I believed that we needed to solve the voice problem first. And so we told them, "Hey, we're pivoting to this."

Now, this time, remember 2024.

Everybody thought we were out of our minds cuz we were building a dictation product.

You know, like dictation exists on your phone and laptop. It comes from free Mac literally has a microphone button. Like

what are you building?

Yeah. I can't even imagine man like Yeah, exactly. Like if you were to tell

Yeah, exactly. Like if you were to tell me at that point and this is exactly not that far. I'm trying to think of my

that far. I'm trying to think of my worldview at that point at N24. I'm

investing very actively at least in India. Yeah,

India. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of stuff in the US. I'm

there in the valley every 3 months.

Yeah. If she told me that, hey, listen, there's this guy trying to build a dictation app.

Like, okay. Anything else?

Yeah. No, exactly. That was everybody's reaction. And so our investors are

reaction. And so our investors are fantastic. They supported us. I don't

fantastic. They supported us. I don't

think they had a lot of belief in what we were building. I was like, you know, fine. Investors have to be like that

fine. Investors have to be like that especially especially once they more if if an investor or a VC tends to be a founder back then you have to just play along right you have to say okay I believe you and then you're probably going to leave the office and be like

we'll see what happens and no they were supportive like throughout and so that was one thing that I really appreciated love all of my investors and so we started building it

and then the thing I told the team is gun to your head we're going to launch this product in 8 weeks Right. 8 weeks

from a demo prototype we built in house.

No marketing team, no brand, no nothing.

And then we basically did that, did built a whole marketing function in under 8 weeks, planned for a launch, had a full launch video.

I actually got my brother up. He's he

does video editing. And so he and I just shot the launch video over a weekend and that went viral. We had millions of views on Twitter. I think the first

launch video hit about four or five million views. Massive launch on

million views. Massive launch on LinkedIn and our numbers started skyrocketing. So this was in October of

skyrocketing. So this was in October of 2024 when we first launched Whisper Flow to the public.

Since then, it's been kind of just this incredible rocket ship journey where we basically had to create a new category.

We had to tell people why this was something that they should use. And now

it's a lot more of a, you know, norm and somebody says Whisper Flow, a lot of people have heard about it. There's a

very strong brand there. But back then it was really hard for us to acquire new users because everybody was like, "Oh yeah, I tried Siri and it sucked. I don't want to try

voice again." So voice was this voice

voice again." So voice was this voice was this field that just had a really bad reputation cuz consumers had just been let down for the last 20 years

man that's crazy. So let's then talk a little bit about post uh and then you called it whisper flow cuz whisper flow we combined the names.

It just came naturally. Let's go back to sort of launch plus 3 months. One of the questions that often I'm sure as a founder you've been think you were thinking about this back then we all think about right that okay look that

that first inflection point how did that happen like was it genuinely just how do I explain it the best way was it manufactured luck to a great degree did you do anything in

those first few months that you know you you think was some of those smaller things that make the big that made big differences a bunch of them so the first thing that very strongly

believe in is at the end of the day you're giving a product to humans and humans are very emotional creatures. So

if you ever are sitting in a kind of meeting with me at the company and I'm doing a PRD review or anything like that, it all comes back to TK. How does

this thing make the person feel in the specific funnel? And so what that also

specific funnel? And so what that also look like is for the first 500 users that we got, you actually couldn't download the product. You set up a call with me. I was on there with you for 20

with me. I was on there with you for 20 minutes. You would screen share and go

minutes. You would screen share and go through the entire onboarding process.

And the thing I was looking for, you still do that to some degree. I

do that to some degree like what yesterday night somebody was installing the app at the dinner we were at and I just stand over their shoulder and I just look at them and then I found a couple of things to fix in the onboarding and then I message my team

right after and then I do that at airport check-in lines or wherever I get people to download the app cuz I just want to see you know cuz uh like what is nonobvious to people how are they feeling but the main thing is when I was

looking at these people on board onto the product the key thing I'm looking at is their expression where are they confused where is there a smile on their face where are they feeling like you

know a little impatient to go ahead and we did so many improvements on their onboarding side cuz I wanted that to be the first impression you know it's like somebody walks into your house the first

thing they see they set an impression when they first meet you first 5 seconds sets an impression for me that was the the product like the first onboarding has to set an impression and the key

thing I realized is if you can make the person feel extremely excited and just feel like they have unlocked a superpower then you can do so much more with them.

And so my full focus was the onboarding funnel we worked on for 3 months.

The next thing was uh figuring out how to reach these early people and so set up with this hypothesis key it seems like there's a lot of founders right now

that are using this product so let's target them and so my key thing was I would go to them and be like what are the couple of recent tools you've you've tried out they would tell me and then I would ask the most important question

which is where did you find them because that would tell me a validated channel that they trust to discover new tools It was subreddits and it was

newsletters. So that was the first set

newsletters. So that was the first set of things that we started off with.

Not so much Twitter.

Not so much Twitter then for this like first. Yeah.

first. Yeah.

Um the next batch of people was Twitter and LinkedIn. So I scaled over there.

and LinkedIn. So I scaled over there.

But that's how we got to our first thousand users uh before the launch cuz my main thing and these people I on boarded cuz I wanted to make the product perfect before the la perfect. Um, and

so that's how the first couple of months look like ahead of the launch.

Tangential question, but a very important one that I think about a lot.

Do you think that in consumer I think I know the answer, but I'll tell you where I'm going with this. Do you in consumer and consumer AI particularly,

how much does the quality of these first thousand users matter? So where I'm going with this is that it's a very common thing in B2B, right? B2B software

AI agents um that you know choose your design partners design partners very carefully work with them hand in glove and that's very important because they'll define how to build the product

did you have a similar lens on um when you were rolling this out I actually don't think it matters in consumer at all cuz in consumer I think that humans are

fundamentally very similar and this is again you're thinking about it from the human psychology layer from like their emotional and all standpoint H but like just to challenge that a little bit right like say if you were not in

Silicon Valley and you did not go to founders.

Yes.

And you went to say you know a student in India I'm sure the feedback and the way they would do things would be very different.

It would be different and we'd start off with the students bucket.

We would start off with a completely different ICP but that would be fine cuz we'd learn from them and we decide how we wanted to scale the business cuz we started with that founder ICP. And

did you also start with the founder? So

did you start with the founder ICP?

There could be two reasons. One the

obvious one that this has this ICP seems like has the largest problem that we can solve the best which is the first principles way of thinking that founders are super busy typing all the time so

let's solve it. Was there an angle of also this could be a very influential consumer base to drive further growth?

I'd love to say I had that hindsight.

No founders we landed upon because of convenience first but then so after the we did the launch we actually saw a very surprising thing which is our users came

from all walks of life we had lawyers doctors students we had designers we had real real estate agents who were using whisper every single day and basically

when we talk to all of them isn't like a large segment today just coders coders make for about 12%.

Or was you just have this on and you're like talking and just coders talk about it a lot. So that's

why probably I think if somebody had to guess they would be like oh 80% of whisper user coders but like no it's 12%.

5% are lawyers. So there's two and a half like there's only two and a half times more coders than lawyers who use whisper.

And so then we actually defined 26 different ICPS that we could go and build the product for.

This is pre-launch. This is right after launch. So found was clear.

launch. So found was clear.

Founder ICP was clear. Then we found these other ones. And so by January, we had a list of them. And then we're sitting and we're like, "Okay, what do we do now?" Cuz if we try to build a

mass market product, I fundamentally believe that's how you die. If we try to tackle all 26 ICPS at once, we will also die. Because remember, the team at this

die. Because remember, the team at this point is very small. We're seven people, one person in marketing. And so we decided to pick three ICPS

developers, creators, and founders. Founders expanded a bit

and founders. Founders expanded a bit into business owners. And here's why.

One, these people are generally more techsavvy and often download more products. So it's great. It's going to

products. So it's great. It's going to be easier to get to them. But the second and more important point was they had a high K factor. Cuz if you get one of them, they will tell a lot more people.

their companies and so on and they were those influential hubs where you can get more spread from. So that's how we picked these segments and that worked really well because what we saw

happening was on Twitter and LinkedIn every day there were five posts from these influential people talking about how much they loved Whisper Flow and creators were making videos just showing Whisper Flow in every single one of

these. They might not even talk about

these. They might not even talk about it. they were just using it and then

it. they were just using it and then every second comment was what is this speechto text tool. So that was the second big big wave we saw from focusing on those. And now of course we've

on those. And now of course we've expanded the ICPS that we target a bit more cuz we can focus on more people.

But my key goal is with every type of customer that we build the product for they need to feel that this product is for people like me and that drives a lot

of what happens on both from the product to the marketing and messaging side.

This is incredible and this I can imagine you know um even like I'm I'm learning so much even after having known quite a bit about the company. Tell me a

little bit about what does the average not average because there's nothing average these days but what does your typical or day-to-day at whisper look like in terms of how you organize your

life right so like the metrics you track what do you do first thing uh how does a team work around you and the pace you operate at I think like some of those things because it feels like I consistently keep hearing this back

again and again through this today and even the last few days that a lot of what is making whisper tick So you know I had long long time back

seen this uh image which was this arrow like a big arrow right and it said the base and then it had multiple sort of milestones along the arrow and then there was a tip.

Yeah. Uh and if I had to take the whisper sort of analogy, the tip of the arrow is what we see right as consumers.

Like, oh my god, what a lovely product.

But there's so much at the foundation and the input and the execution that is going in as a company to make it work.

So give us a little bit of a peak into that that how day-to-day what does it look like, but it makes it really work.

Yeah. So I'll give you how I think about structuring it cuz my every week looks completely different than the week before. So every Friday I have uh 1 hour

before. So every Friday I have uh 1 hour that I spend thinking about what are the most important problems in the company that I need to go and solve

today that will unlock the next level of growth, help us build the next mode and I come up with three key priorities.

Two weeks ago for example when I was doing it that looked like we needed to scale up our B2B motion. We needed to uplevel the engineering team and we

needed to prepare more for the India launch. These are the three things. Then

launch. These are the three things. Then

my next week, every day starts off with 30 minutes of just reflection on the previous day and the key goals for that

day that I have. This is actually insanely important for me to set up because my my my default is I'm a guy. I'm like

I can do everything and anything right but the problem that comes is I then plan for more things to happen in the day than I have time for and I just keep working through the night not being satisfied with what I've done. So this

thing helps maintain sanity because I pick these three things that I need to solve today and then by the end of the day when I solve those three things I can actually rest in peace and that is

huge to come back tomorrow fresh and be able to be my best self. So then I pick these things and during the day I can

spend this time anywhere from sitting individually with my employees and helping them in some ways. It could be a

4hour block that I will set up sometimes just to deeply think about a new thing that we're doing and figure out how we want to approach it.

Some days it's just meeting a lot of people outside the company to either bring them on as partners, potential hires, and so on. Uh the way I've

structured my day basically comes up from how I think about managing my energy and how I think I do my best work, which is I've realized for myself

I can be in one mindset in a given day.

If I switch mindsets, things don't work.

So if I'm deep in engineering and the product, I don't talk to anybody outside the company. When I'm talking to people

the company. When I'm talking to people outside the company, that's all I want to do for that day because I'm in just this zone of selling, convincing, all of that that I need to make happen. I

realized when I used to context switch those two, it would just kill my energy and I would be a potato by the end of the day, which is not what I want to be.

And then the key thing I realized is this one thing that I started doing a lot this year. If I look at a certain team that's not doing well. A couple of

years ago I used to think oh maybe they're not working hard enough or maybe like the people aren't right. But now

the two things that I come to is one I might not have set the right expectations with them. two, I really want to understand why this is not working as fast as I want it to because

either my expectations are wrong or they're not working as I think of. And

so what I started doing, I saw one of the the teams not doing well and I just sat with them and we I saw them how they worked with for example claude code to

build new systems and I realized a few very key points of uh inefficiency going on. So I work with them. They told them

on. So I work with them. They told them key this is how I would do this and so on. And so basically the feature that

on. And so basically the feature that they took to took 1 hour to build they could now do in 20 minutes and the next week onwards oh my god the velocity that

team operated at. And so a lot of times you know I used to previously think like okay I need to hire more engineers because this team is unblocked and going faster. But now it's unlocked to cuz I

faster. But now it's unlocked to cuz I know I hired great people. I think I can work on them to make them faster and that is a big thing that's led to a huge unlock because Whisper is still a small

company just 50 people.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing man. Um you know on this last point so sorry just recapping I really like that idea of okay look step back every week and look at sort of

what your top three priorities look like. You know how I think about just

like. You know how I think about just caveating that for founders is that per week, every day or every quarter or every month that frequency needs to be determined per your business. Yeah.

Right. Like in a lot of like in a in an enterprise sales business doing it every week is actually more you might probably come up with the same sort of thing and it's actually more right cuz you can you have to see things play out,

right? That's true. Yeah, like you have

right? That's true. Yeah, like you have to see long sales cycles play out for some time before you come back and sort of, you know, say, "Okay, listen, we're going to go all into this." As an example, versus for you, you know, it's it's a more frequent business. But on

that last point, you know, even at Activate, uh, as a venture firm, it's kind of been hilarious, right? All of

Activate today and people see us doing so many things across the board. Like

this conversation is not even directly related to my business. Yeah. Right. We

know you're different stage, different uh sector, different country, company, but even the entire firm besides the two partners and founders Pratush and me is

one full-time person.

That's incredible. Incredible. And every

few weeks like why I found that analogy interesting is every few weeks, you know, I will just wake up being like, "Oh my god, this is so exhausting."

Yeah.

We need to hire and we'll go put our JD out right?

Yeah.

within two weeks by the time we meet candidates and we make some progress we've already done so much on cloud code that now we don't need that person and this has been happening consistently now for 6 months

right if you just go in and spend some time and you've identified something and you automate it the just the need to have teams and people do mundane work is just you know

not not needed anymore.

Yeah. Uh and same thing like the last piece that you mentioned right that if you just sit with somebody that 60 minutes can become 20 minutes to ship a feature and then suddenly you realize that hey listen we don't need 10 more engineers maybe we need two.

Yeah exactly.

Awesome. On that note you said something that I picked up on. Tell me the you can choose the number three four five two metrics that you obsess about.

The topline metric that we track is what we call Dowo current. the

current specific metric that comes from this underlying mark of growth model that a lot of great great uh consumer companies like Dualingo use. I can go back into

that and why that's helpful, but it basically is an incredibly useful way to model out your growth by merging in retention, activation, everything into a

single single model. But this is basically our proxy for an engaged user.

So I don't care about the DAU current.

DAU current and it's a Marco model for people to look up.

Exactly. And so uh Dueling has this fantastic article on how they model their different users. And I'll tell you why this is the key metric I look at is my topline goal is not get as many

people as possible to try whisper. It is

to get as many people as possible to build the habit of voice.

Right? And so if I get a user that tries once, we ran into one guy last night who's 100,000 plus words, right?

Yeah, exactly. Those are the kinds of users I want to create. And so the I'll tell you one funny thing. 3 months ago, we used to track AR as a metric. AR is

not a topline metric anymore.

Wow.

Because when that was a topline metric and I would talk about that in every single all hands, the team was like, okay, now we need to find ways to improve ARR. Then they started doing

improve ARR. Then they started doing more monetization experiments and I was like Kyle, okay, we've limited resources. I would rather have you spend

resources. I would rather have you spend those resources in experiments to get people to build the habit of voice, figure out what's stopping them, make it make them more comfortable about it than

trying to get them to pay us. Because if

we get somebody engaged and loving the product, we'll get them to pay. And so

there's not saying that the ad is not doing well. with growing revenue 40%

doing well. with growing revenue 40% month over month was actually we don't even talk about that cuz the things I talk about and the things that you track is the exact way your company operates.

So this metric DO current is users who use the product today who have used the product one more time this week and they're not a new user.

So it's like a small segment of this.

But what this does is this is not gameable because I can't spend a million dollars in marketing acquire a bunch of new users. That's right. Who drop off

new users. That's right. Who drop off because that's not going to move my So the user who's a used who used the product today, yes, he was he or she could have been a new user yesterday.

Uh we keep a new user for one week.

So for the first week, you don't get to enter this category. So we have to retain the user for at least a week and then these people it's not like you're using it once a week. used it at least twice a week and today

and so because we add so many filters that makes a very solid metric and that to me is the best metric that is both very good to model and it is

very good for tracking the key thing that we care about and the key reason why we chose this metric and why modeling is really important is because whenever we launch any experiment right

and so we have a very deep culture of growth experiments within the journey. A

lot of times you need to let an experiment play out for a while, right? One week, two week, 3 weeks. And yes, that's great, but that

3 weeks. And yes, that's great, but that also really lengthens your learning cycle. So

what we build underneath every single one is a predictive model that is able to predict okay based on these processing growth and DO current is able

to predict how this is going to affect the key metrics that we care about and that is incredibly helpful because that gets our marketing team very early numbers to improve performance marketing that gives our growth experiments very

good numbers to be able to scale this very quickly. So now I go into like very

very quickly. So now I go into like very minute details but this now fundamentally drives everything else and of the 100 metrics or so we could have chosen to be our number one

this is the primary one we chose and this is the one we start every single all hands with every week this is where we are this is how much we improved and these are the things that we did to

improve this number um amazing anything else what's second level third level what's second level uh that's been top of mind for me right now and this is right now

thing because I'm focused on building our B2B business.

Yeah.

Is the number of companies you know I want to talk about uh a reflection right now.

Um we've been spending time like I said all week, right?

And I want to kind of bring a few things together.

Um you said that every Friday, right, you think about the three priorities.

And I just want to reflect for you is that I can clearly tell that you've thought about this B2B thing recently cuz through this week you mentioned this so many times. Yeah. And even in just

casual passing conversations, right? Uh

not like formal obviously chats and all that but even when offline people have been hanging out. I've noticed this come up so many times. So just as a takeaway I think for all of us you know one thing

I can sort of embibbe for the lack of better words is when you're obsessed about those two or three things it's just like ingrained right like you're talking about it you're doing this time you're telling people you're telling

your company probably every like you're the complete becomes that uh for those for those I I do get very deeply obsessed whenever I get into something and that I only talk about that

because that is all I'm thinking about those are all the people I'm reaching out to to just learn a lot more that's by the way one of the things that I personally love about building is that how you think about culture for

everybody else in the company as well I think about culture for everybody else as so I'll tell you the the slight difference so one thing is if you do something just do it incredibly well to

the best that you possibly can do and so that is something I expect from every single person in the company I think depth is so underrated right like in this world of like uh in the world of

like 60-cond reels where everybody Everybody is just obsessed with consuming content. It feels like it

consuming content. It feels like it almost feels like anybody who can become like 90th percentile plus deep in a subject just by design will have a higher chance of

success.

Yeah, I think that's that's huge. And so

that's one thing I focus on whenever we hire any new person, the one thing I tell them in my first oneonone is I just want you to be the best person in the world in this specific field that you're in.

You tell me what you need from me to do this. If you want anybody in the world

this. If you want anybody in the world to come and be your adviser, be your mentor, I will go and find that person for you, but I want you to put in the effort to be able to build yourself to that point. And so there's actually a

that point. And so there's actually a bunch of things that I personally do for each of these people to get them the right person. For example, uh we had

right person. For example, uh we had somebody in our team who was going from becoming an engineer to an engineering manager. and I put him in touch with one

manager. and I put him in touch with one of our angel investors who was the CTO of Dropbox to help him like how do you do that cuz Dropbox had an incredible engineering.

Yeah. And so that is something I do for every single person in the team now.

They have to come up to me and request to By the way, that's a side note as a great way to use angel investors.

Yeah.

Right. Like often enough like founders have this uh you know call it this celebrity list of here's my VC, here's my angel. look down the cap table and

my angel. look down the cap table and then you know they struggle to actually make use of most of them cuz you usually reach out hey listen I'm stuck I want an intro but actually getting your team to potentially work with an angel actually

the is a is a great idea yeah so most of the angels we get they were all ex- operators and my key tell for every angel is what is something that you can teach me and that is what I look for in my first conversation is

everything else apart what all things that I learned from this conversation and what was the rate of learnings per unit time cuz somebody scores very high on that then I don't care. I want them

as an angel on our our cap table.

Awesome man. Uh we are right about to wrap up. So let's talk quickly maybe

wrap up. So let's talk quickly maybe next few minutes um about India and India two perspectives.

Yeah.

You grew up here. You're obviously uh as Indian as any one of us. Uh but I that everybody knows and you know I think that's very inspiring. But talk a little bit about India from the angle of whisper. Yeah.

whisper. Yeah.

Right.

um you're here u I know for a fact um when you just mentioned again one of those three things on a Friday India launch uh you're starting to build a team here uh tell us a little bit about

whisperers plans for India and again why like I asked this question over these last year between the AI summit there's Sumi AI founders coming to India yeah

um you know you could there's like rest of the world to also go to so remove the remove the Indian out of you and tell us about like whisper in India the question is Why not? So this

question comes up a lot because I'll tell you the the mindset of both people in India and outside of India has been that Indians don't pay for products.

That is what I used to also think about a year ago. But the more I dive deeper, the more I realized that was fundamentally wrong and it was from a

different era. And so I'll tell you what

different era. And so I'll tell you what the key things are when I look at this.

So number one, India is actually one of the fastest adopters of AI in the world.

Most products. That's true.

In the world, which is actually, if you think about it's insane.

Yeah. And let's be very specific. I know

what you're saying and just to the audience. It's the fastest growing,

audience. It's the fastest growing, which means every time people confuse it with this idea of like, oh, we have 300 million users. No, it's not the

million users. No, it's not the absolute. The rate of growth

absolute. The rate of growth yes of AI product adoption and the rate of consumption of AI products is one of the fastest in India.

Exactly. And for every single company like at least by number of users India is like in the top three always.

The second thing is Indians actually pay but Indians pay when they get a good amount of value right so this is a very value conscious country and so they're not going to pay

for random things that they use as a one-off and so as a product if you want to build for India you need to show that you provide them a tremendous amount of

value and so a very counterintuitive fact for whisper is the conversion rate in India from free to paid is the same as that in the Yes. From free to paid.

Wow.

And now again, India's been scaling really fast over now in a And you're already in the millions of users in India.

Uh millions of users overall.

Overall, not paid.

India's going to get there soon.

Yeah.

Um and so that was the second.

And isn't your second largest market?

India's our second largest market overall by paying customers also by revenue and number of users.

Wow.

This again counterintuitive.

Who would have thought, right, that for like like if you tell like the average Indian for a mic, you'll pay I mean just think about it.

No, exactly. And so the the third thing that we found is Whisper is actually the perfect product for India cuz India is a voice first country.

Instead of messaging, we love to call.

We are the country that presses the voice button on every single app, beat Google Maps or everybody else. In the

US, people don't do that at all.

And for a country that loves to speak, for a country that speaks in so many different languages, the keyboard's actually the biggest hindrance for us to be able to express themselves, use any

other product. And so the thing we've

other product. And so the thing we've seen about India is the habit formation is so much easier cuz this is how people have wanted to

use their devices this entire time and finally there is something that's built for them. And so a big focus inside

for them. And so a big focus inside whisper also is making this product be the best AI product for India. What

are the things that we can do for that?

That is why I come here very often. I

spend a time with a lot of our users here to deeply understand okay what are the things that are missing that we truly need here and one thing that came

up earlier was English for example. So

English is how like we all talk to friends and family in all of North India and no AI company till today has solved English. You solve English, you solve

English. You solve English, you solve Hindi, there's one language for each.

And for me it was at this point it was like if I don't build English and we launch in India, I'm going to be embarrassed. I can't not have that and

embarrassed. I can't not have that and come here. And so we actually pushed our

come here. And so we actually pushed our ML team to build English into the model.

And for reference, this is a really hard problem extremely that no company has solved yet.

Not Google, not everybody else.

Switching between two languages, insanely technical. And so our ML team,

insanely technical. And so our ML team, they they were like in no promises.

You're telling us to solve a completely unsolved problem in in uh 8 weeks. But

they actually made it. And I love it.

And when people here use it, the best thing I feel is they feel like you know this is a product for Bhat.

It was absolutely the aha moment for me personally.

Yeah, that was it. Like I when I first before way before we met when I first got acquainted with the product that was that was the aha moment which is uh somebody told me again a founder friend

told me hey listen you've got to check out whisper flow. I downloaded it. You

know, initially, of course, as consumers, you behave yourself, right?

So, I talking in like proper English like we are speaking and then of course one of the days I remember I was in my car and um you know, I was there's a lot going on that day, right? You lose your distress, you

day, right? You lose your distress, you lose discipline. So, I just started

lose discipline. So, I just started talking to it and I didn't realize I mix Hindi words and I didn't realize what I was saying and I got it perfectly right.

Yeah, I remember that was the that was a real unlock uh and the aha moment and uh I can't even imagine like how hard it must have been to get that right and like I'm almost tempted uh uh that the

next time um I'm going to take you up on this and I'm out in SF or we bring some founders we'd love to like sit with your ML team.

Yeah.

Uh you know if they have a little bit of time because it's a problem that just to your point that everybody has tried it global US labs India labs largest companies thrown a lot lot of capital

but super hard. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, awesome. Uh, what's next?

What's the rest of 2026 look like for Whisper? We are already 3 months in.

Whisper? We are already 3 months in.

Didn't realize it.

I know.

One quarter gone.

Three months pass fast.

Yeah. So, you have 25% of the year left.

Yeah. Lots to do. We're launching a number of new product surfaces which is primarily all focused around now.

Whispers built trust with people where people just blindly trusted to write on their behalf and now people wanted to do things for them. Yeah,

them. Yeah, this is the request we've been getting from a lot of customers.

Add me to add me to that as well.

You're there as well cuz with city you don't want that cuz you don't trust city to do things. But Whisper, we've built the trust and so now we're going to be shipping a lot of actions. And the key

thing there that we're building is really looking at okay, what is something in your life that you do multiple times in the day that just feels like grunt work? Those are the specific things I want to take and solve

for you. So it's a very different way to

for you. So it's a very different way to build these kinds of actions and workflows into the product. It's not

going to be the basic like make a calendar invite. Nobody cares about

calendar invite. Nobody cares about that. It's solving those real problems.

that. It's solving those real problems. The second thing is uh now we're starting to bring whisper to also a lot of companies like we have millions of users but now we also have 5,000 enterprises

amazing that use whisper. A lot of the Fortune 500, a couple of the fangs have Whisper deployed to a lot of their employees.

And that is going to be, I think, a big thing for us because what we see in the these companies is actually insane.

You go into a floor of one of these big fan companies and you will see people in the company have a mic on their desk.

Again, these United Nations mic that we first started.

Why did you get one of those? That

reminds me.

It's It's phenomenal. and everybody is speaking to the computers, the entire office. It has fundamentally transformed

office. It has fundamentally transformed how companies function, how individuals function. And that is the change we're

function. And that is the change we're starting to see company after company where the same way, you know, many years ago, computers became a thing that every desk had. Now it's this mic that's

desk had. Now it's this mic that's becoming a thing that every single desk has.

Awesome. On that note, we're going to install some of those in our office.

Yeah, we're going to I'll get you some whisper branded ones.

Would love it. That's awesome. Why don't

we get some of those for just like you know we can distribute it to founders in India. Um you know emerging startups. We

India. Um you know emerging startups. We

can do some giveaways. Maybe we can uh chat a little bit about more than happy to we'll we'll talk more and we'll set that up.

Yeah. So we we will definitely do that.

But T uh it's been awesome uh talking right now and just hanging out uh uh this week. Um like I I always I say this

this week. Um like I I always I say this consistently. People have been asking me

consistently. People have been asking me all the time about you and just whisper um and I say this that look it's rare to find so much consumer love

and founder and team depth right in a solution or a product of a problem. Uh

and I think you're really breaking both of those. So more power to you uh more

of those. So more power to you uh more power to you to build a great product.

Uh and of course all of us u from a you know bharti or selfish India angle are proud of like some of the work that you're doing. Um and um you know many of

you're doing. Um and um you know many of us uh hopefully are already whisper users who aren't will check it out and um you know uh uh waiting till uh India

becomes uh possibly the largest market for whisper.

That is where I want to take it.

Awesome. Thank you man. It was great. It

was awesome. Thanks.