00:00It is the moment. I feel like the energy in the ecosystem has never been greater.
00:05I'm now at the pleasure of being part of London Tech Week, of being during this energy that is building
00:12out in London and across Europe.
00:14And I feel now people realize the incredible talent we have, that you can really build a global company from
00:21here, from the start.
00:23And people want to do it. People want to work on ambitious projects, want to show what's possible.
00:27And the number of startups, the number of individuals and talent that is going after that couldn't be more real.
00:33And we feel that at 11 Labs, but we also see this across the wider ecosystem.
00:37Do you feel like you've catalyzed that message to some extent?
00:40You've shown, you've demonstrated with 11 Labs, valued north of US$11 billion, that you can actually build a globally
00:47scalable AI company out of the UK.
00:50We are proud that we could start here. Both my co-founder and I studied in the UK.
00:55Most of our early team was here in London. And we, from the start, thought that you can build here
01:04and you want to build globally.
01:06You want to compete with the biggest companies out there and show that you are leading on benchmarks, leading with
01:12customers, leading on outcomes.
01:13And that was always the ambition.
01:16And I hope that a number of people, of course, after that fallout, seen that effect as well.
01:24We are seeing now more, happily, more of the ecosystem building where some of the people that were early joiners
01:30will leave to start new companies.
01:32Some of our people will join companies here in the UK to grow with them.
01:37But one thing that's very interesting that we are also seeing is a lot of people around the world want
01:41to come back here,
01:42whether that's senior talent joining 11 Labs, whether that's talent joining other companies and build from here.
01:51And, of course, you know, we saw there's Amorphic Labs recently, the announcement, also an incredible story.
01:56So I feel this will just get more momentum.
01:59That talent flow back to the UK, that's material, that's significant.
02:04And you're seeing that impact and that's changed?
02:07Is that a this year story?
02:09I think this last 12 months, definitely a big effect.
02:13Another piece is, like, as I think about ecosystem, the talent part is changing.
02:18The risk approach is changing.
02:19More people are keen to start companies from here and just take that big swing, big bet.
02:26Third thing, I think in the US, one of the big appeals of Silicon Valley is that the big companies
02:31buy from small companies.
02:33If you're an early company, you know the risk that you need to take.
02:36You are still going to take that risk.
02:38You will give them the chance to prove the value, prove the outcome.
02:41And recently, we've seen that in the UK and in Europe, too.
02:45Of course, now we are a big company.
02:48But over the last year, whether it was Revelo, Trainline, Deliver, all of those companies are taking those risks,
02:57are working with some of the frontier AI companies to elevate and, of course, together with us to bring that
03:01experience.
03:02And we, too, now give a lot more chances to young upcoming UK companies and European companies to give them
03:08ability to scale.
03:09Have you ever come under pressure from your US investors to move to San Francisco?
03:14Luckily, they are aligned that there is a huge advantage in us being in Europe as well.
03:22And that's one of those is talent, that the people we have in the team are some of the hardest
03:26working people across the company.
03:28We have a majority of us across Europe.
03:31We have now almost 100 people here in the UK, scaling to 200 over the next few months.
03:37And we think this is our big advantage to some of the companies from the US,
03:41where people in Europe want to work for ambitious companies, frontier companies.
03:47And here they have the chance.
03:48They know that whether it's London, whether that's some of the other cities,
03:53you are part of the core team building for the world.
03:56And investors realize that, too.
03:58Of course, we spend a lot of time in the US working with our customers there.
04:02We have some of the biggest customers, like Meta, in the US.
04:06But we found a way to balance it out.
