The AI tool that turns conversations into action

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Speaker A: Kia Ora Kouto Kato welcome to Business is Boring. If you're someone who thinks by talking, this is a story for you. What if your meetings, coaching sessions and interviews could turn themselves into insights, actions and articles? That's what Contented a, uh, Christchurch startup led by Hannah Hardy Jones and Lucy Pink is building. Their tool helps teams make sense of conversations, surfacing key themes and actions without drowning in notes. In this episode we talk about bootstrapping, building thoughtful tech from Aotearoa and how they have built a business with global customers and a whole lot of momentum. Tenou Koroa thank you for joining us.

Speaker D: Thanks for having us.

Speaker A: Hey, so you've both um, started startups before and then kind of joined up as a, as a dream team, uh, to make contented happen. What did you learn from those first startups coming into it? Maybe starting with you Lucy?

Speaker D: Um, I guess for me and Hannah we had our own startups like you just said. So I had on you and Hannah had the, the Kite program. Um, and that was so ONU was born from um, Covid. So I was at my parents and always wanted to get into software engineering but never had the time. And it was this miraculous moment where I had the time, um, and I was lucky enough to kind of be able to sit with my laptop while battling my other job, um, and learned to code and started to build, um, a startup which helped people understand more about their products. An ethical perspective. It was a kind of a crash course in startup land. Every, I guess, everything from pitching to investors all the way to learning how to talk to businesses. And we ended up getting over 70 ethical brands from around the world on this marketplace. I, um, guess marketplaces are tricky. They're hard. Um, but what I kind of learned from that was how much I was obsessed with product and building, um, and less so selling and sort of getting businesses, uh, on the, on the platform. So for me, it was always a comfort zone to be building, um, and I always found it really tough in terms of actually getting the revenue numbers up. So I always look to Hannah and her startup because on her side, she was thriving in that department. So me and her kind of became fast friends just from kind of that experience and those journeys side by side.

Speaker A: Cool. How about you, Hannah?

Speaker E: Um, I think probably the biggest thing I learned is I was. I could be visible. So I could, you know, I could talk on LinkedIn and I could pitch in front of clients and I could actually sell well. But I learned that your product obviously also needed to match that. And I think time and time again I would bring on these customers and I would have just incredible. I mean, one point brought on the Natural History Museum in London. Like, it was just this dream client. But as soon as they signed, I had the sinking feeling of the product just isn't good enough.

Speaker D: Like, I've.

Speaker E: I've sort of sold this, you know, this dream that, that it's not. And so through that time, by the time Lucy and I came together, it was just so apparent to me that I hadn't done the customer research and I hadn't truly built a product that that sort of met the needs of all of those customers. It kind of met the needs of me. It came out of my own experience. But it, you know, there was some really amazing learning. So I think when Lucy and I came together, we had got this clean slate and we could just bring together all of these learnings and do it better.

Speaker A: Yeah, tell me about that coming together. How did you come to work with each other? And what was the. Kind of like, what was the original insight that set you on the contented path?

Speaker E: We sat next to each other, um, at the Ministry of Awesome. So we were in the, um, what's called the Founder Catalyst program now. Um, so we just got to sit there and we'd, you know, go and have some lunch and we talk about what was going on in our startups. And when ChatGPT launched, um, it was a really amazing opportunity for us to just try and turbocharge what we were doing with our own businesses. Um, and we went really, really deep into just every single way it could be used. And at that point Lucy was even um, trialing what it looked like to have Google Sheets with GPT within it. And it was really kind of, I guess quite, it was really new for everyone. Um, and this insight that we had was around the fact that you know, when you have no resource and no real budget, what this technology can do. Um, and it really, I guess it gave us those insights around. We could actually really help businesses with this. Like this could actually be what we were meant to be doing, you know. And I think that was when we, we started consulting. That was the start of our consulting journey, um, business and AI.

Speaker D: But it was to the point where because we had jumped in so quickly, we were pretty fast, um, users of it. So family, friends, even legal firms, a lot of businesses tapped us on the shoulder to um, either consult for them or do presentations on AI. We would show them these Google Sheets and you know, they were super tempted to even purchase them from us. And I remember at the time saying to her, there is no way I'm going to be doing support queries for these Google Sheets. So they're so clunky, um, and they would work one day and then not work the other. But it was this beautiful moment of being able to, you can imagine a sheet with some terminology and you could then use AI to sort of completely um, transform that into whatever's needed. And so Google Sheets was the first sort of non chatbot interface that, where we were seeing the likes of AI transforming things like content or numbers or whatever into that scenario.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's so cool. And um, the path to deciding to concentrate on conversations and taking kind of like natural conversations and turning them into a whole lot of useful things people can use. Um, how did you land there?

Speaker E: So we started um, from the consulting. We started building bespoke tools for customers. So we didn't have a SaaS product. We would just go into a business and say, tell us about your pain points, um, what are you trying to achieve? And we would build tools that would either be around content or it would be. We had a lighting firm that wanted us to Turn specification documents into other data. And so they were really niche products. And, and we felt very spread. Like we had so many different customers and so many different bespoke tools that we knew we wanted to tie it all together and actually have a product, a SaaS product that we were proud of. And time and time again, every time we used Voice within the tool. Um, and one of the examples was Business Canterbury, um, down here, where they need to really quickly provide information on changes and government issues to their members. And Voice was the, the best way to do it. And so the CEO would just talk for five minutes and that would turn into a press release, which would then turn into an update for a newsletter for their members. And that power, uh, and seeing how that transformed them, like, we, we knew that Voice was the way to go. It was the most reliable and authentic way to use AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's such a, um, I mean, it's such a cool product and concept because especially if you're someone who kind of thinks by talking and then you have like a meeting with someone, you talk about all the cool things to do, and then the meeting ends and then you sit down, there's an empty page of paper, and you're like, oh, boy. What, what, what did we talk about? You know, like, it's so great to then, you know, have something that can take what you've talked about and help you make it into, um, some, some of the kind of, like, next steps. And so how did you go about, like, describe for us, please, the product today. Like, what are those next steps and what are the major use cases of the way that people use the product?

Speaker D: We've got some cool use cases. Um, and I was just talking to a wealth management firm over in Sydney recently, um, and she was saying how transformative it is, especially for those who kind of shine in front of a client, but don't shine in front of a laptop. So, for example, you can imagine a marketing team at these firms, um, who are so desperate to show the amazing knowledge of all these advisors, um, and they're trying to interview them, they're trying to get them to at least kind of come up with some ideas for blog posts. And she was saying, essentially she's got these advisors doing these client meetings with actual people. Um, maybe it's about estate planning so they get to talk at depth around what they need to prepare for, for, you know, an estate planning exercise instead of, you know, going back to the laptop and writing these. The top five things you need to consider. Um, you know, the marketing Manager will actually jump into that client conversation, grab that um, and put it through the marketing module where they can actually go, let's just concentrate on advice, removing the clients and removing their sort of situation and names and just pulling out the authentic, genuine advice. So that one client meeting can be turned into a compliance record. It could be used for internal training, it could be used for so many different areas, but then you could also use it for marketing because that's where the most genuine sort of advice and knowledge can um, come from.

Speaker E: Yeah, and I think there's a, um, so many different outputs, like there's 32 different things you can do with the conversation. So it's everything from walking on the beach, talking to yourself about strategy and having outputs for that through to a team meeting that turns into action steps, decision logs, a SWOT analysis, you know, really rich, rich outputs. So we're not just talking about high level action points and a little bit of a summary. Like these are so deep in insights that they're actually strategic assets. They're not a transaction which is voice to, you know, bullet points. It's things that actually move the needle for a business. And that's why I guess when we work with some of our enterprise customers, Contented touches every department because they're all linked and everyone needs different sort of outputs from the same type of conversation. And so it's, it's super powerful what one voice asset does, you know, into, into all these different outputs.

Speaker A: And like two of your biggest um, verticals that I've heard you talk about have been uh, one in News and one in kind of this wealth management kind of space. Could you describe for us kind of like how both those different industries use uh, the product?

Speaker D: Well, news came about only because um, we were obviously working, like Han said, in that sort of customer development world who were working a lot with kind of consulting firms, local, um, government, um, and then somebody was visiting um, New Zealand who ended up becoming an ah, advisor, a man called Peter. And he saw how good our outputs were and this was someone from the us so we were super stoked to hear this. We knew that our outputs were good, but it's always good to get a bit of a validation. Um, and he was like, because you're so accurate, because you can transform these council meetings that are five hours long into minutes, surely um, you'd be able to help the journalism world, especially publications over in the US who were kind of struggling at this time. And so anyway, he used contented, um, and they saw phenomenal results. So the Palm Springs Post. There's a good number of amazing publications across the US that use us just because of that. So they were kind of our first SaaS, um, customer, um, and they just paid immediately. Like for example, it was, it was a crazy moment when we'd gone from kind of these one off big um, payments from these custom tools to people kind of strangers across the street just using Contented, finding out about it and paying for it. So that was, they were sort of our first magical customer. It was like the first time that you know, we didn't have to sell it, they just used the product and they loved it. Um, and they, they're still with us to this day. So that's why we always talk about news is because um, the product hasn't really changed too much, it's just kind of got better. Um, and so these customers that we were sort of looking after in the early days are still with us to this day. So we do reference them just because they were such a great customer for us. They were challenging. They had very, um, specific needs around content and formatting and language. They didn't want it to sound like A.I. obviously. Um, and they're a really good judge of that. So we were really lucky that we had such a kind of an intense customer early on.

Speaker A: And how does the wealth management kind of use case go?

Speaker E: So with each of the firms it's split between their client facing um, needs. So um, client meeting turning into ah, AML record or a file note or a letter. So what does the client actually need back? And that's incredible. Cause as you can imagine, not many people, you know when they're sitting with a financial advisor or wealth manager, understand all the terminology and it can be quite overwhelming. So they get this incredible sort of, you know, range of outputs back that helps them make decisions. And then you've got obviously the internal, um, compliance side as well. Um, then you've got all of the training and learning. So if you're a new advisor, the fact that you can dive into this client meeting and draw out all the things that you need and why did it go well? And how could I, you know, use some of the um, you know, these terms or this way of working, um, which is huge, um, marketing is massive. So lots of our wealth firms are really active on LinkedIn now because they can be writing, you know, amazing articles just from talking. Um, so that's really huge.

Speaker D: Um, and they have podcasts too. Yeah, podcasts. And also the way that wealth management came into Contented's world, um, is because essentially, um, one of our customers, customers here in Christchurch is an OBA management firm. But a lot of firms are part of sort of larger associations. And so this association was just happenstance. Had to be in Christchurch and they were visiting, um, Christchurch for their sort of annual catch up. Um, so we had some of the world's best wealth management firms all in one place. Han got invited to talk about Contented and the use case with just this one customer. Um, and it was our first time where we actually wanted to give that association the ability to then use Contented in the conference or in the summit itself. So they were catching up with the Crusaders leadership team to talk about sort of personal, um, development on that side. They had lots of amazing speakers, so they even used Contented across the summit. Plus Hannah got them actually involved in recording themselves and putting it into Contented during the summit. And so Hannah like excitedly called me up that day and was like, Lucy, they're running around with their laptop and they're recording, recording each other. Somebody even went off to, you know, on the way to dinner, they interviewed each other and turned it into a LinkedIn article. And you know, that was, I would say that was quite a moment for us because it was the first time a, that we were sort of ballsy enough to do a real time demo to get people using Contented in front of, you know, potentially some of the world's best financial firm CEOs. You know that these are incredible humans. And they all just, just loved it.

Speaker E: Melted, I would say.

Speaker D: Yeah. And now a lot of them are now customers and they, they basically created the foundation of that vertical for us. And then since then it really has skyrocketed. And what was really cool was, and even in that summit they had a moment where they were comparing AI meeting and conversational tools. So all the likes of kind of a couple of our competitors were discussed and one person was just like, well, hey, I actually just think we just need to be going for Contented.

Speaker A: Yeah, awesome. And what are the features that are meaning? Because I think everyone, um, you know, in the world of work would have um, experienced that kind of tsunami of note takers entering every single meeting for a little while. Right. Uh, and so it became quite a frothy space. What have been the things about Contented that have meant that it's been more meaningful and more part of how people work and has features that are more important to people than this kind of slew of note takers?

Speaker E: Yeah, it's, I mean it's the output quality I always say to people, like, all it takes is when I do demos, it's, you know, we record five minutes of us talking and then we put it through Contented and I just show them, but there is no selling with it because as soon as you click a button and they see this output and they are genuinely blown away. Every opinion they have of any of our competitors is just, it just goes away. So often I'll get people going, oh, I use, you know, I use this, I use that. I've tried 15 different tools. Um, I had a, um, we rolled this out to a private school recently and the head of innovation had said, I, I've used every note taker, like I genuinely, um, I'm completely up with the play with this. And just same thing, just them seeing these outfits. He said, this is just special. This is so special, you know, and people often say to us, you should be so proud of this. And I think there's obviously lots of other features that are really incredible with Contented, but it's fundamentally that quality and the fact that you can do something with that output, uh, you can see that output and immediately go, I'm going to take this action or I'm going to make this decision because of what I've just seen here. And that's just, yeah, an incredible thing.

Speaker D: I think we see conversation in a different light too. You know, a lot of meeting tools, um, maybe it's a bit more transactional, but I think because we are so human centered and when I say human centered, I mean Contented really comes into its own when you hear from the teams using Contented. So Contented for health and safety officer in a manufacturing plant is game changing because they can just record a health and safety incident and it creates a compliant record. Uh, insights for leadership. Uh, how do we not do this again for porn? Um, and it's actually game changing for them and they are so emotional about it. And I think Contented provides the space for people to experiment and create their own workflows. So a lot of other meeting tools, it feels a little transactional, like these are the bullet points, these are the decisions. And because we spend a lot of time, especially for our enterprise customers, building these incredible outputs based on the user. So that sort of compliance record or that change management canvas is based off Alan's own insights and how he would build. So he gets sparky and kind of very inspired when other people are using his templates. So I think for Contented we really try to make it as human centered as possible and everything we build has to be around the user. Um, and it's kind of easier said than done. Um, for example, our app, you can now record, um, on the go, and then it obviously gets transformed and synced into Contented on the desktop space. But what it enables is the ability for people to be able to record in those manufacturing plants. Um, the use cases kind of come into their own because of all the sort of different products and the features that we build.

Speaker A: And as a kind of final thought for this part, like how, how far has it traveled now? Because I, I saw you speak and it was really cool the way that you said that one of your biggest kind of, um, you know, marketing things was that people use it and then if they use it in every meeting, everyone's like, well, what's this great thing that you're using? And next thing you know, you've got this kind of viral, um, viral kind of technique coming out of it. Where is contented now in the world and how's it being used? What stage are you at?

Speaker E: Yeah, I mean we are in, um, the us, uk, Singapore, uh, Australia, New Zealand. So we are spreading around. I mean wealth management is our largest, um, sort of vertical at the moment. Um, but as you can imagine, you know, wealth managers often are on board. So, you know, the reason we got into the private school scores because one of our wealth management clients is on that board and they used it in that board and the principal said, what is this? I need it, get me a meeting. And so most of what we do currently and we're a tiny team, we're still three and a half people, you know, is this word of mouth. And you know, for us the exciting phase that we're going into and capital raising, etc, is the fact that we can actually put in some marketing strategies because we don't do that. We are literally just have this incredible stream of, of people, you know, um, you know, we've got a shipping company in Singapore because of one of the accounting firms in Christchurch and this woman happens to be on the board there. It's so quick. Like it is like a wildfire situation, which is, you know, amazing for us because most of the people I talk to from a sales perspective have already seen some outfits from Contented, so they're at that next stage of going, so how do I get it? What do I need to know? You know, and you don't even have to go through that sort of pitching part, which is amazing.

Speaker A: So cool. Yeah, nothing like, uh, word of mouth for a conversational app, I imagine.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, let's come back in a second and hear a little bit about how you built to that level and what comes next.

Speaker B: This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more@accenture.com Spotify

Speaker C: this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility and availability various 18

Speaker B: when you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

Speaker A: Hey, so I really enjoyed hearing from you two at the Electrify conference where you did a great session on validation, like listening to your customers to truly understand what kind of, um, benefits they got from your product and what kind of things they'd pay for and care about and what kind of things you should build. And you did a really cool demo using your product to help you learn how to make your product better, which is a great, great use Case, can you tell me a little bit about like, the approach you take to really listening to your customers?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think it's. We're still learning, you know, we're definitely not experts yet, but I think the one thing, uh, an amazing bit of advice I got was kind of negative feedback is a gift. Um, and it's funny because I think especially when you're starting out, you're so, um, attracted to positive feedback validation. And sure it's really good to get some positive feedback, but negative feedback is great because it kind of ticks off a couple of things. It shows a past behavior. So for Example, if they're comparing you to a competitor or then moving to a competitor, it's great because they can literally tangibly say it's because of X, Y, Z reasons. And it is just joy to a product person's ears when you hear that, because it's like, actually this is tangible, this is stuff that we can implement, and especially if you hear it time and time again. So validation is massive. The one thing I very much realized is you can talk, you can talk to so many customers, you can get a lot of insights, but nothing beats getting it into their hands as quickly as possible and seeing it, um, in the world of AI, you can now, and this is what we do as a company, is we use AI tools to mock up potential UI changes, new features, and then we actually give that to a customer to use. Um, and then we go, cool. We can see them using it, we can kind of examine how they use it and what that looks like. Um, and then we can then send it back to the engineer to build. And so that speed of kind of rate of change from listening to feedback, hearing the signals, building, you know, can actually happen within one breath. Now, the cool thing also with contented, and this is not, you know, obviously we're very biased with how we use our own product, but we use it, obviously. I think we're obviously, obviously the top user. Um, and it's because things like Hannah, with her sales calls, she'll able to, you know, she'll be able to have amazing connections with potential customers. They'll start to talk about their pain points, their world, their life, um, everything along those lines. And Hannah's amazing at getting people to sort of draw out those insights. Um, and then it means afterwards, Hannah can create some amazing product insights. Using my own template that I built Hannah to go, hey, every time you have a good sales meeting, please click this button and this will surface everything from jobs to be done, um, key sort of metrics around their current meetings, how many meetings they're having, how many conversations they're having, what that looks like. Um, and then I get to then share that with the team. So it's amazing just seeing how one sort of sales meeting can actually turn into not only sales assets, but product assets and software assets.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's so powerful. And I've seen in lots of organizations, um, they managed to get customer support as a key input to product, but the sales product, uh, information pipeline is not always that great. So that's a really cool way to actually totally, uh, get in sync on that.

Speaker E: Yeah. And it's amazing being able to. When I know someone has said something and they've referenced something, because I'm not writing notes, I'll just sort of like lock that away. And then straight away being able to surface that, like, what are all of the things that they said around this competitor and why and the pricing and to be able to give Lucy that straight away. I still. Because I like the positive reinforcement, often I'll come out and go draw out all of the things that they said that were amazing about Contented and how it blew their mind. And I'll get this table and I'll be like, oh, I love this. And then I'll give Lucy the one which is like, where they weren't sure or where maybe they didn't respond to a particular feature. So there's a real good balance. And that's the thing you can, you know, that's really motivating, I think, for when we grow our sales team is being able to let them wallow in some of that positivity as well as some of the, you know, the improvement. So, um, it's really exciting.

Speaker A: And in listening to that kind of customer feedback and the like, like, where do you see the product going in terms of your, like, major use cases and the way that people use the products as. There's probably a couple of stages in all this, right? Like, now people are used to single products that do single jobs, but in the future we'll probably be more used to AI always being on and just helping us with everything and not being so single use. Casey. But you're in a funny stage in the middle of that right now, right? How do you, how do you address that?

Speaker D: I think the winners ultimately know the customer, and if you want to get even more specific, they know the what flows and how people create and how people design or how people create. For us, it's outputs and content. So the winners really need to understand what that looks like and what good looks like. And I think regardless of what the interface looks like, if there's no interface, there will still be an area for Contented to be able to populate that goodness and be able to understand those workflows at some point, if that makes sense. Um, and isn't so abstract. The thing for us currently is what we're learning at the moment is about user flows and what that looks like. So, for example, the power of Contented is to be able to share sort of, let's say we were all in this team meeting, we're all in a board meeting. Um, and just one of you needs to record and then you could share that to the HR department to say, hey, these were the three things that the board's really concentrating on this quarter regarding hr. Actually that was an amazing part where we were talking about the new dam that we're building and we're getting some really amazing feedback. Let's. That's marketing. You currently can't share in contented, but it's about to go live soon, which means that one person can record and then share recordings and be able to add notes. So you can actually tell the right person that these are the insights to create. But the one part I'm really excited for is this horizontal insight. So as Han just mentioned, um, it's one thing to create immediate insights out of an output, it's another thing to be able to draw out insights across multiple. So you can imagine for these sales meetings that Hannah's, um, we're really excited and we're already using it now, which is to be able to talk to multiple sales meetings with certain disciplines. So I could say, okay, let's just concentrate on the wealth management sales meetings. Let's surface up all the insights about all the competitors. Um, and you can actually create some amazing insights from bulk analysis. Um, and that's something that's really going to truly, um, move the needle for a lot of our firms and companies. Cool.

Speaker A: One of the cool things about this moment as well is how, you know, the world of like product wasn't always seen as being technical yet. Like product is how people experience the, the technical thing and is the absolute most important front end of things. And now these AI tools are allowing more people to, as you said you would do, prototype and build solutions and understand the underlying technology and then a natural language, actually get things that you used to have to learn arcane languages for. Like tell us a little bit about how you know, you're taking advantage of this moment and how it expands what a technical developer is. Because I think the old fashioned version of technical developer being just like a full stack engineer or something, uh, technical founder or technical kind of people, I think it's gone. I think it's out of date.

Speaker E: Yeah, I think one thing we've really noticed with our team, particularly Mia, uh, our developer, she really understands, she's got a lot of empathy, really understands people. So we're seeing more and more. What's really important with some of the technical side is that deep understanding of people and being curious and being excited about why a customer is saying something. And so that's all incorporated. I think that's changed so much even in the past, uh, the past few years in terms of what's important in some of those roles.

Speaker D: Totally. I think especially like you just touched on is previously before AI, a lot of um, you know, a lot of software was built by software engineers. It was sort of gate kept by then. So if you wanted to build an app, Hannah would, would go off and find an agency to build um, the kite program using an app service. Um, and it was sort of this power dynamic of you had these people that had these brilliant ideas but in order for them to become a tangible reality, you then had to pay a crap ton to these agencies. Um, and now you've actually got the ability for people who are bathing in a problem, the ones that are actually experiencing a problem day to day, to go in and create a product that's based for them. So I'd say there's going to be an amazing movement where we're going to have even better products because the people who are experiencing them can create these products. Saying that I do think you still hear of failed startups and you still hear of products that don't go well and I do think fundamental startup, you know, um, logic still applies. Like just because you're having the problem doesn't mean everyone else is having the problem. You know, you've still got to go through those validation sort of layers. Um, and so I think, I think coupled with, you know, we now have amazing insights from, you know, Lenny Buchinsky about how to build product. So if there are people who are really passionate about getting an amazing product to market and want to solve a problem, I think the time is really ripe for everybody, um, to jump in and become a technical founder in some sense. I do think there are still areas where you definitely do need technical help, um, and to level up. Um, but AI will help with that too at some point. But um, for now it's amazing at least, um, I think we're still at MVP stage at this moment. I think if you wanted to get an MVP to market, jump onto lovable, go in, build some low code tools, have a go, get some validation, potentially get some people paying for your product. Um, and I think that that part is going to be a lot quicker and faster.

Speaker A: And it's magic, right? Because best practice, like the reason product was such a important kind of way in here is it's the intersection of what users want and what the technical delivery is of what you give them. Right? And now the ability to do amazing Prototypes and you know, people dismiss the stuff. It's like vibe coding, whatever. You're like, no, like the world's best prototypes that have ever been possible is what you mean by vibe coding. And then if you find that there is a, um, if you find that there's real traction, then you may have to rebuild. But that's also been the story of every app that was made as a test, you know. So it just feels to me like this amazing moment where the definition of what a technical co founder, uh, can just go away. And it's just anyone who understands people and users and what a solution could be can start to deliver it. Which just feels like this amazing like democratization and flowering of creativity that we're starting to see.

Speaker D: Totally. And you could even like I would urge people, especially when um, people come to me for, you know, for us for advice around getting going is actually just mocking up an already built interface. So for example, if you're wanting to build a social media tool, you know, putting in Facebook and then going let's just change the Facebook interface to something that you think is better or, you know, or let's do this and actually just already innovating on interfaces that have already become, if that makes sense. You know, there's so many different ways to start getting into using AI just by kind of already just innovating on things that are already here and making them better, um, and making them faster and especially faster. As a startup we feel really excited because we built contented with AI and its blood. You know, like we don't have to retrofit our software for this AI wave. It's just part of what we do and how we build and contented in the future will just be totally personalized to the user. And that could be in an interface format, it could be in the way that they write, it could be everything. And I think AI definitely lends itself to assess world which is hyper personalized. And I think before AI that would have made investors quite stressed with the idea of how do you scale personalization. And with AI it's just where it will go and what's next.

Speaker A: Yeah. And with AI and you know, I'm always kind of um, this thing in the back of my head going, oh boy, all of this is going to age badly. It's going to be like, you know, when we, it'll be like we say, and so recently we've been using computers and the Internet. Uh, you know, it's going to sound weird in a few years, but right now it's still so day one, that people can, you know, like, the work that you're doing is extending the usefulness of these huge models. And the fact that you can get in there and do that is amazing. You know, like, as people, as builders, as people making things happen. Right? And there's that availability in lots of areas of the world right now with AI, get in, um, get up to date with things, and you can actually push it forward in the application layer. Right. Like, that's a wild opportunity that people look back on and go, I can't believe this stuff hadn't been done by AI yet.

Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And I think, like, it's just moving so quickly. And I think our focus is always not on the AI, but on our customers. And so often, like, we won't talk about AI really with our customers. Um, sometimes they'll say to us, you know, do we need to let the person that we're recording know that we're using AI to analyze the conversation? And, you know, we was like, look, you're using a tool. Yes, there's AI within it. There's also incredible other things built on top of it and innovated on top of it. So, you know, you don't have to constantly say, you know, I am using AI. Um, and I think we, we love being able to be really innovative, but also just make it so every day and approachable for our customers so that they're not. They don't feel overwhelmed. Um, they just can start using it even as somebody that's maybe really technologically challenged. And we have lots of customers like that, and that's a huge thing too. We're democratizing access to something that maybe is usually quite complicated, and they can just start implementing it in their day. So it's really powerful.

Speaker A: Where do you see this going? I mean, you touched on a little bit there, and you spoke really interestingly about, you know, consent around recording and the like. And it's pretty simple, right? Like you say, hey, I'm going to record this conversation to help with my note taking. Is that okay? And people say yes, and it's pretty easy. But, you know, we've gone from a place where people were stressed about the idea of Alexa to now people are, like, letting in eight note takers. They have no idea who owns them into every meeting that they do. Like, we've got very relaxed about, about being listened to. Where do you see kind of this kind of conversational partner, kind, um, of always being recorded, always there to help us going in the Future.

Speaker E: I think a lot of the, um, I guess we're really driven by what our customers say, obviously. But I think there's, there's. What we see is that conversation is so important that there potentially is a time where everything is just recorded and everything can be transformed quite easily. You know, like we talk about Contented at home, so we've got professional Contented, which everyone is using it for. Lots of people are starting to use it for these, you know, conversations with family members and going to the bank and building a house and so starting to transform. The way of thinking is that if you're having a conversation it's not being recorded and maybe using, you're not using Contented, it's a waste. Like, what's the point in saying the words because, you know, they go into the, you know, ether and a week later you can't remember all the conversations you've had. So we do see more of a move towards this, uh, you know, recording is normal and accepted and actually offensive if it's not recorded.

Speaker A: You know, and there's some really interesting things around. I think the one thing I've seen you talk about before is, you know, one of the cool things about the product is it helps to surface where maybe your own biases are, uh, versus, you know, if there's a record of a conversation and then your notes are like, like all the things you like, you know, in my case, and then you've just ignored the other things. It's, it's kind of good for people to have a more objective view of what was going on that they can then refer to. Right.

Speaker D: And you can imagine, and I think we've all heard the story, which is, you know, the loudest voice in the room often is the decision maker because, you know, that is just organically how it's gone. But actually, you know, the quiet person or the weak signal, um, often has incredible ideas, um, and is sadly not kind of led into that decision making area. So with Contempted, you're basically just surfacing up all insights. Um, and there's no bias, there's no waiting. It's just literally the words that are coming through. Um, and so that's where it's so exciting. And for Han and I, those are the use case stories that we hear time and time again, which is as, as somebody sitting on the board, they'd often have an idea, um, and nobody took them seriously. And then after implementing Contented, they were able to kind of highlight what they said and how it showed kind of evidence of what they were talking about and actually kind of get, uh, get their voice heard in the room. And so we've got some really awesome, kind of amazing case studies around that.

Speaker E: Or they record afterwards, you know, so maybe they don't feel comfortable in the room sharing, but they do amusing for five minutes of all the things they've thought of post meeting. Because a lot of people need a little bit of time to reflect and think. And so it's opening it up all these amazing opportunities for people with different learning needs or maybe with dyslexia, like all sorts of different. I guess. Yeah. Sort of ways of thinking and learning and reflecting. Um, and we make that possible for those people.

Speaker A: And it makes so much sense that, that, you know, contracts, uh, emerged as a way to record things. But there's a big power imbalance. People who know how to make contracts can kind of get more of their own way over. Whereas the conversations you have with like you said, someone building your house or someone, um, you know, doing a project with or, you know, anything where there's like a contract thing, the conversation around it where you set the terms and, and share what your understandings were, should be part of the record as well as the actual contract. Right. Because that's what the humans understood. And you can really see a world where like in Russia there's all the dash cam footage because the insurance won't accept, uh, won't accept it. Without dash cam footage. You get to a place where the small claims tribunal will be like, well, where's the conversational record?

Speaker D: Uh, yeah. And that means because we work with some incredible companies and you know, we're getting incredible conversations coming through, contented every day that we're getting exposed to pretty intense, kind of very unique AI problems. So our work stories are pretty interesting, um, most days. And one of them is, is around sort of the security and legalness of a transcript. So if somebody wants to edit a transcript, um, making sure that the AI meeting tools have like a change log, that's something I'm really passionate about, is for you to be able to, if a conversation does get to that point and it's happened with us, you know, to be able to go, actually that's been edited and that's been amended and where is the source of truth and do we trust, uh, the software that's housing that source of truth and who can export that? And just because I was part of that conversation doesn't mean I had to sign up for a SAS product to get my data, my transcript, my conversation. Um, and so There's a lot of sort of areas within this space which we are really excited to kind of hopefully kind of lead in terms of ethical management of kind of transcripts, conversations. Um, you shouldn't have to pay for a software to be able to grab that. So you know, for us at Contented, that's a really important area is if you want to create insight, sure, that's contented. But if you want the transcript, that's yours. It's a place where you need to be able to grab and hold safe.

Speaker A: Sounds like an actual use for a blockchain. And then like, like where, where next? So you've bootstrapped to now pretty much right by doing things like consulting on AI and then, um, you know, this crazy thing of like selling a product profitably, which is like so cool. Uh, and, and, and where, yeah, what's the next stages for Contented from here?

Speaker E: So we've worked so hard to bootstrap to a point where we don't want to be in a position where we are, uh, say raising capital and we're having to convince that this is an amazing idea and that we've got this vision that we can actually enact on. Like, we've done it, we are doing it. And so we've got to that point, which is exciting to be able to go into this capital raising, um, path and know exactly who we need, why we need them, where they'll be. You know, like it's so clear. Lucy and I laugh like, you know, when we were with our previous startups, we would say we're going to be a billion dollar company and we'd be talking to investors and you'd kind of sort of believe it, but kind of not. Whereas now we really do believe it because we've, we're living it, which is, which is great. So we've, it's the opportunity to be able to grow our team to the point of being able to really, you know, turbocharge what we're doing and you know, and see that wildfire grow around the world. Which is, yeah, the plan.

Speaker D: And it's, it's. The vision hasn't changed. Which is for Contented to be part of the world's most, most important conversations, whether that's at the un, you know, at NATO versus around the family table talking about, you know, uh, a parent's cancer journey. You know, these conversations are incredibly powerful and important and um, they need to be safeguarded and we just want to be leaders in that space, um, and be part of this incredible AI, um, area and this next backstage.

Speaker A: Yeah, you can kind of see a world where everyone has a conversational assistant helping them. Right. And that's, that's a really cool thing. As a couple of final thoughts, what would your advice be to people who, because you both were in the startup world, founders and then came together through the great ministry of awesome program and you know, shout out to them what a great organization. Like, what would your advice be for people who are wanting to build something today? Um, you know, what's available to people and what's the best approach to um, turn those ideas into reality?

Speaker E: I think the main thing would be even before thinking about how to build or what to build is talk to 100 people. And it sounds like a lot of people and it is. But talk to 100 people and truly understand their problems and don't talk about what you want m to build. It's really easy to go, I've got this idea and it's going to be an app. It's going to do this. Can I ask you some questions? Like take out that first part and go. I just want to understand these things. And the key thing being if you had to open your wallet right now to solve that problem, would you, would you prioritize it in this economy, for example? And that's the seriously telling part, to then say, I should go and build this. Like, this is a really house on fire problem because people would prioritize maybe buying extra food that week to solve it. So I think, think, yeah, we probably bang on quite a lot about that, but I think if we could go back again, we would have done that more.

Speaker A: And is that from. And I think it's like, I think it's like a really healthy on ramp that people enter the entrepreneurial world by pursuing their passion project or problem that they are really passionate about. Right. But if you do find that that's not something that is a, uh, house on fire problem, then it's really healthy to change and move and go, wow, this world's great, but maybe I've got to be customer led rather than passion led. I mean if both can line up, brilliant. But it's very hard to hear. It's not lining up if you're too passionate sometimes. Right.

Speaker D: Well, and I think, you know, the Social network, a lot of, um, sort of movies glamorize this thought which is you come up with this amazing, um, idea and everyone just loves it and it's the situation. But in fact some of the best ideas are some of the most unglamorous it could just be a case of, you know, you as a HR manager, just think about your tedious software you're already using or think about the way that you're working. There is just so much innovation just to be had in the mundane. Like, so much. Um, I guess after Contented, I kind of look at everything and go, gosh, there is so much people could jump into already. It doesn't have to be this miraculous shower thought and this sort of moment where you kind of think, wow, this is going to be revolutionary. If you kind of start small and to find those users, you can go on to Reddit, like, for on you. I found the ethical subreddit, um, and very quickly saw tens of thousands of potential customers and I literally DM them each single one. And I would kind of make sure I looked genuine and I put my LinkedIn, um, page underneath each one, and that's how I got my first customers. So I think finding your customers where they're at and experiencing that pain point and actively talking about that pain point is really important. So jumping into Facebook groups, forums, you know, asking friends is kind of. It's pretty good. They're probably just going to say that they've got the problem because they're friends with you and they kind of, you know, they love chatting, um, but find people that are not in your circle, um, and just kind of feel uncomfortable quickly is probably the big, key bit of advice.

Speaker A: Love it. And as a final thought, what will success be for you too? And for Contented?

Speaker E: I think for us, we have these goals within our team of, like, if contented could be used in this situation, like, how incredible. So, eg, Contenta being used in space and someone having the recording app in space, working with David Attenborough's words, like, having his words in our tool. And we have all of these goals as a team of things, and it's almost like a challenge, like, how could we get there? Who do we need to get in front of? Um, but I think essentially, you know, for us to be able to impact, you know, across so many different countries, different languages, and knowing that these conversations are actually making a difference to our world, you know, like, you look at the state of our planet and, you know, the people on it currently, if we can m. Move this needle and try and actually create some, Some positive change, like as some sort of legacy, I think would be huge success.

Speaker D: Totally. Hannah summed it up perfectly.

Speaker A: That's so cool. Hey, well, thank you so much for, uh, joining us and sharing, you know, some of the story so far. That's Hannah Hardy Jones and Lucy Pink, co founders at Contented. Thank you so much.

Speaker D: Thanks.

Speaker E: Thank you.

Speaker A: Awesome. Can't wait to see where you take it next. Uh, if you'd like to check it out, it's Contented. Uh, and thank you very much for having us along and having us in your ears. And to everyone who helps make this happen, like our producer, Te I ha Butler, if you do like what we do, please do rate and leave a review. It really does help.

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