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- [00:00]
Grainger Commercial Announcer
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- [00:16]
If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift. And you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:45]
Jamie
AI company Deepgram has just raised $130 million, giving it a new valuation of 1.3 billion. So this is a big number. It's a big deal. They are a AI voice company specifically focused on sales, marketing and customer support. So definitely a huge industry that they could, they're already disrupting in a big way. We're going to talk all about their company and their new raise. Before we do that, Jane, why don't you tell them about our school community?
- [01:11]
Jane
Yes. So every single week, Jamie and I record an exclusive bonus piece of content on School Community. We're doing a whole series on how to start a software company if you're, if you're not a coder. I am not a coder, but for the last few years I've been working in the software space creating products and my most recent product is AI Box AI. It's you get the top 40 AI models in one place, you can chat with them and you can also build AI tools. We have a whole marketplace where you can post your AI tools for other people to use. So that product and that project that I've done, I've spent over $600,000 and three years developing it. And today I think you can build a lot of that for a couple hundred dollars using a tool like lovable or base 44. Over on school Community, Jamie and I just recorded a we're recording a new series that you can go get access to. It's 19amonth. It is how to build a software company if you are not a developer. I've spent the last week building a product which will soon be called podcaststudio.com. it is a full podcast distribution platform like Spotify for creators or Acast or like all of these other ones that cost a whole bunch of money. I rebuilt, created the Entire thing in a week for 200 of lovable credits. If you want to see how I did that and how you can build a software product, too, with payments, like, literally every integration, fully functional software thing without knowing how to code. Go check out the school community, because this series is going to be insane. All right, let's talk about what's going on with Deepgram. This is a great company, and honestly, that is an insane amount of money. Like, a huge kudos to them. $130 million. Um, who hopped in on this round I thought was interesting, they had a bunch of their existing customers or existing investors. So basically, when you see a company like this raise more money, you know that. And they're doing it from existing investors, you know that the investors believe in it and the company's going in a great direction. So I think they already had in Q Tel, Drona, Higer, Bing, Y Combinator. Those are all previous investors, and all of them put more money in. So they've raised a total of $215 million. If you go over to their website, they're basically an AI voice company. They specifically help with voice agents, and they have an API, which just means that, like, if you companies can tie in and use their. Their product inside of their platform, I think this is huge. And I'll give you an example of where I've seen this specifically used on a website. If you have your own company or platform where I'd recommend using a tool like this, I usually, when I'm doing customer support, I like to think of myself as I want to talk to a human, right? Like, I think we all basically have the same feeling because we've all had. Have bad experiences where you've called up customer support. And it's like, this is the customer support bot. Tell me what you want. And you're like, all right, like, I need to, like, cancel my credit card. And it's like, you would like to extend your credit. You're like, no, cancel the credit card. It's like, I cannot do. You're like, talk to a customer service representative. Like, you just start screaming, talk to a customer service representative. Because, like, the bot doesn't understand you. And then you talk to a person, you get your problem solved. Okay? We've all had that terrible experience. And so I think because of that, it's very easy to think that, that the AI models today are just a variation of that. I'm here to tell you they are not. They are amazing, and they can actually handle most of your customer support. I've had two experiences in the last at least two weeks. But maybe it was the last week that I basically was like, okay, we're in a completely different world. And this actually is very functional. And this is what Deepgram is. Deepgram is, is winning from. So I'll give you those two experiences. I don't want to hear Jamie's thoughts, thoughts on these, these monstrosities of AI. So the first one was I was on 11 labs and I am on the 1300 dollar a month tier of 11 labs. How I got myself into that black hole, don't ask. It's a slippery slope. You start using credits and you. Soon I'm just like, you know, trying to figure out how I'm going to pay $1300 every month for this thing. So I have this like massive project that I'm doing. It's actually going to wrap up. So I've canceled and already proactively turned my countdown to $5. But I needed to know with 11 labs I was like, what happens if I turn it down and I don't use all my credits? Because I had like 11 million tokens on my account. Like if I don't use all my tokens, like are they just going to evaporate? So my guy, I got to talk to customer support before I like cancel. Otherwise I was like, I need to hire like 20 virtual assistants. Just spend all day long like finishing this project for me, right? It's going to be a madhouse on that account. So I was like, where do I talk to the customer support? And there was like no button anywhere. I was like getting frustrated. And they had this little button was like, talk to us. And I'm like, what does this thing do? And I like clicked it and, and it was like, hey, like I'm 11 Labs customer support, what can I help you with? And I'm like, no, like, not an AI bot. Like I'm like looking for the speak to a customer service representative. But I was like, okay, I'll just tell it, whatever. So literally I click the button, it pops up, it says that I'm like, I'm on the 1300 month plan. the end of the month, are my credit's going to roll over or are they going to expire? And it's like it literally, what's so cool is it's tied into the your account in the backend. It knows everything about you. So it's like you are on the $1300 a month plan. You had 11 million tokens, you've used 4 million tokens you have this many tokens left at the end of the month because you're on this plan. It looks like you've already downgraded your account to the five dollar a month plan. And because of that, you have two months where your tokens will roll over for the next two months so you don't have to worry about them, like, getting canceled. Is there anything else I can help you with? And I'm like, actually no. That was all of my questions very concisely. No waiting on hold, no listening to someone with an accent. That was hard to understand. I was like. Except I was like, close it out. So that was an absolutely amazing experience, honestly. Amazing. And this is exactly what Deepgram is, is capitalizing on. Eleven Labs obviously is going to like, use their own tool for their thing, but every other platform in the world can use Deepgram. 11Labs is a good option too, but Deepgram is a great option with the API and it will do that. Tie into your, like, use an AI model, which is probably like Gemini, Claude or OpenAI to like do the brains and the thinking. And then you have one of these voice models that will talk and just tell people. And like you've replaced all of the frustration and difficulty of customer support, sales, and a lot of marketing stuff.
- [07:11]
Jamie
Yeah, that's. I mean, that's awesome. I think one of the keys here, and probably what is separating Deepgram apart from others right now, is, is the low latency. So one thing, because I've talked with some AI chat bots as well, one thing that really annoys me is if there is a waiting period, if you have to wait for it to like, figure out what you said and blah, blah, blah, you know, and then the slowness makes it feel more frustrating and less human. Like, although if they do solve your problems, I'm willing to wait as opposed to waiting on hold for a tech support agent overseas. But the latency factor, I think is what is driving this company's success. And again, the API, where you can plug it into your software. So, yeah, I mean, I think right now with ChatGPT, the voice chat is really great. You can tell sometimes trying to think about what you said and it's giving you like a kind of a slop answer. Like, yeah, I can understand how that would be really frustrating, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it gives you your answers, but it still just feels more natural. So I think there's definitely a key to that. Yeah. So let's see here. It says that 300 million, 300 million Americans have used voice AI. Is that correct? I guess I believe that.
- [08:25]
Jane
I mean, so I think what it's referencing specifically is there's like 300 million Americans that do drive throughs and it's saying like, basically one of the big things that Deepgram is focusing on is being like the voice of the drive through, which. Do you remember the whole Taco Bell like, thing that happened last year where someone ordered like 18,000 water cups because they didn't want to talk to the voice AI?
- [08:46]
Jamie
I do.
- [08:47]
Jane
Yeah. So I think, like, I think a lot of people are like concerned because they're like, oh no. Like Taco Bell did an experiment where an AI voice would take your order, but then someone like hacked it. And I think maybe whenever that happened that was like a, A reason. But like today with OpenAI and anthropic being as smart and even Gemini being as smart as they are, like, I think you could just say if someone makes a ridiculous order, tell them to clarify or that like, you can't do it. And I think you really could have the AI completely do all the order handling and like, obviously someone's trying to hack it. But like, you could say, I want to order 18,000 water cups to a human too. And they'd be like, sorry, you're ridiculous. You know what I mean?
- [09:23]
Jamie
Yep.
- [09:24]
Jane
So anyways, I think like companies got a, like a. They were like, oh, see, look, the AI can't do it. It's like, obviously it can do it. Just put a little, put a little tag in to check everyone's order and see if there's an anomaly. That seems ridiculous. And even if you're a restaurant like McDonald's or Taco Bell, say, here are the last 10,000 orders people have made. Does this order, like, is there an anomaly in this order that is, you know, not seen in the last 10,000 orders? And it's like, if it says yes, then he's like, flag, don't let them do it for whatever reason. If it's a no, then just put the order through and let people buy their stuff, you know?
- [09:56]
Jamie
Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, yeah, I think the, with the AI voice thing with the drive thrus, I, I think it's gotten better even since I've noticed different restaurants using it. Like, like now I only get referred back to a human if like, it can't understand me, if the wind's blowing or if the kids are screaming too loud.
- [10:14]
Jane
Have you went to drive throughs of restaurants that use it?
- [10:16]
Jamie
Taco Bell, Yeah, Taco Bell. I think ours still does. And then unless, okay, unless there's a big if it can't understand you or something, then it'll kick you over to a human. But I think it works pretty well already. And I think, you know, if they're heading this up, I think it could be a huge, huge industry for them to dominate and it's going to save companies a ton of money.
- [10:36]
Jane
Okay, amazing. Apparently Carl's Jr just got acquired and so some of their investors are looking at, like, rolling this out there too. So, yeah, I think we should see this. Like, I think basically all fast food, um, it'll just make it easy and clear. And I mean, I think the biggest problem the fast food restaurants have is, like, the outdoor speakers are like, so hard to understand half the time, but they could solve that problem. Just go stick a nice Bose speaker outside and let people talk in HD quality to our AI overlords. I think that's a great way to order food. Like, I don't know. I know people will hate me, but, like, if an AI can do it and it can do it well, I say just get an AI to do it and get a human to do something different. There's all sorts of creative things in the world, interesting things. We don't have to be the robots that pick up heavy boxes and break our backs or flip, you know, super hot oil. Like, just get robots and AI to do it all. But I know a lot of people don't, like, don't like that theory. I'm like a big automation guy and I think that there's unlimited things for people to do just to be creative and, and to go build interesting things they want to do. So. So, yeah, this is amazing. We'll definitely keep you guys up to date. This is a huge raise of money for Deepgram. They're doing a great job here. It'll be interesting. I did hear what was interesting is that they weren't actually even trying to do a round of funding, but just their company was growing so much. They had so many investors reaching out to them. They're like, okay, fine, we'll take more of your money, which I thought was hilarious. But this is a fast growing area, very lucrative, so they're doing a great job. All right, everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. If you enjoyed it, make sure to go check out our AI Hustle School community where I break down in detail how I'm building an entire SaaS platform as a non developer. Jamie and I are going to do a whole series on this. So if you want to if you have an app idea or a business idea or software, or even if you don't have an idea but you just want to get an idea. Like go join the school community. This will change your life and be an amazing way to learn how to build SaaS. In addition, there's like other 70 other videos talking about how we grow and scale our businesses with AI tools, so you can watch all of those as well. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you in the next episode.
- [12:41]
Grainger Commercial Announcer
If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [13:11]
If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-granger clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.