Partner Path
Partner Path is a podcast exploring the venture capital and startup ecosystem through the lens of trailblazing founders and operators. We feature candid conversations with early-stage leaders, offering insight into everything from product execution and go-to-market lessons to scaling teams and navigating growth. Whether you’re an aspiring founder, operator, or just curious about startups, tune in for an inside look at building in today’s ecosystem.
Partner Path
E60: Why Voice is the Next Platform Shift with Jordan Dearsley (Vapi)
This week’s guest is Jordan Dearsley, CEO of Vapi. Vapi enables enterprises to deploy humanlike voice agents in minutes. Whether you are building a new voice product or managing millions of calls, Vapi’s infrastructure and flexible APIs make it simple and reliable.
We explore why Waterloo continues to produce world-class engineers and founders, Jordan’s journey from building calendar apps and AI therapy tools to leading Vapi, and why enterprises are turning to voice AI to save engineering time and resources. We also cover the toughest technical challenges including latency, tool calls, determinism, and multi state environments, and why generative voice systems require constant tuning and forward deployed models rather than one size fits all solutions.
Episode Chapters:
- 2:10 - The MIT of Canada
- 4:03 - Pivoting 10+ times
- 6:00 - Why voice AI
- 11:07 - A faster path to production
- 12:05 - Voice challenges from enterprises
- 15:05 - Why stay horizontal
- 17:20 - Actively moving away from being an AI BPO
- 19:45 - Forward deployed engineers
- 21:40 - From scoping to production
- 22:40 - Recruiting as an early stage startup
- 26:05 - ElevenLabs leading the model pack
- 29:00 - Distribution & enterprise integrations
- 32:35 - Quick fire round
As always, feel free to contact us at partnerpathpodcast@gmail.com. We would love to hear ideas for content, guests, and overall feedback.
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