Description

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Aaron Jones, an award-winning entrepreneur working in Artificial Intelligence. Aaron co-founded Yepic AI, a company in the generative AI space, whose flagship product, “vidvoice.ai,” is a state-of-the-art video translation technology that lip-syncs your video in real time. Think about your Star Trek moments when Kirk says, "Scotty, beam us up!" in any language.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Before I was an entrepreneur, I was a cameraman at K Productions, producing a TV show for Sky. I was also an assistant vision mixer, adjusting camera lighting. I thought a career in acting was for me when I was younger, but I later realized I wanted to make a difference in the world. Everything I've done since then has been about what I spend my time on. I want it to make an impact and change people's lives.
• At university, I started an ethical fashion brand, which got me into e-commerce. I don't care much about fashion, but I do care about people. There was a great story about people producing a sustainable, recycled product locally, and I started a foundation in Cambodia to fund education. The idea was that every time you bought a product, you'd fund a child's education, helping parents earn more and children learn to break the cycle of poverty. I did that for several years, was honored by the Queen for my work, and received numerous awards. Like all great ideas, it evolved, and we realized that if we wanted to make an even bigger impact, we needed to create a place for other designers to grow their brands and sell more products, so we could build more schools. That’s how the business evolved into a company called See Fashion, which was a terrible idea. Never work with fashion designers if you want to make money. 
• We pivoted away from fashion to technology, enabling eCommerce brands with a product and a business to sell more. We did this by connecting all the stores as an intelligence web, using visual search as a hook to encourage users to show us what they were interested in buying by uploading photos to the app/store. It soon became an API business, and we sold APIs to companies like Yves Saint Laurent and huge corporations. The most valuable part of the business was the visual search. We did not own the IP, and because GDPR came in, our sharing network had to shut down, as I had not sold the company when I had the opportunity to be acquired.
• That journey led me to meet with the Founders Factory team more than three years ago. It started consulting on an e-commerce enablement project using Generative AI to enhance and generate imagery. It blew my mind that researchers generated images from nothing, and I became obsessed. We've probably created the first ‘stable diffusion’ before research papers made the subject popular. Still, ours wasn't very stable and required an extensive dataset to generate the images. This means that, for an e-commerce brand, it wasn’t that feasible. After this, we got into video and formed Yepic AI.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Entrepreneurs are a bit of everything. Starting a business in a new and exciting space Is exciting, but it also requires you to wear many hats at the beginning.’

‘Don’t work with designers, exit and take acquisition offers, do something meaningful.’

‘A problem that a lot of Generative AI companies are facing is when the hype burns away, to sell it to businesses as a click-through enhancement/ increase to drive more sales, you need to prove that your image drove the sale. So you certainly more than imagery!’

‘There’s been loads going on in the background for a long time, but the public has suddenly become aware of it, and they’ve realized that Generative AI isn’t just deep fakes, among others. You can create stuff. You can generate images in Canva now. You can edit people out of your photos using AI. The creative possibilities in the eyes of the public have opened up massively.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Aaron Jones is an award-winning entrepreneur working in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Aaron co-founded Yepic AI, a company in the generative AI space, whose flagship product, “vidvoice.ai,” is a state-of-the-art video translation technology that lip-syncs your video in real time. Vid Voice is being used in business meetings, telehealth, live events, and film dubbing. It's the first and only service of its kind, available via Zoom.

Aaron was recognized in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, making him the youngest person to receive a British Empire Medal for services to Industry. He was also awarded the Alumni of the Year 2018 by Essex University and was shortlisted for the Forbes 30 Under 30.

Check out the Yepic platform here

Learn about Aaron here

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.

If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.

And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures