Deepgram is a voice AI company that has built an incredible reputation in the market for the quality of its speech recognition. Last valued at over $250M, Deepgram has over 500 customers, including NASA, Spotify, and Twilio.

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram.

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Preview: Fully contextualized speech-to-speech is the future

01:07 Scott's background in particle physics and starting Deepgram

7:18 Scott's first years as a founder

13:17 How the Deepgram team gathered early customer feedback

17:38 Early use cases and product feedback

22:58 How conversational AI will impact the customer support industry

26:54 Specialized hardware in the AI Industry

30:34 How additional hardware specialization will impact Deepgram

32:14 Deepgram's product vision

36:46 Advice for Founders starting an AI company

Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.

Scott Stephenson is the CEO and co-founder of Deepgram.

Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.

Deepgram's CEO Scott Stephenson on Speech AI