A big part of your mission is about eliminating the barriers to visual storytelling. Why is leveling the playing field so important right now?
We live in a time when there are 3.7 million uploads a day to YouTube. Plus TikTok. Plus Instagram. Plus Linkedin. Plus Snapchat. There’s a lot of video! People today communicate through the language of video. It's almost like the early 2010s when the world became mobile first, but we weren't sure yet. The world right now is video first, but we just aren’t sure yet.
When I was first doing video products in the late ‘90s, the average household had video on screen in their house for about five or so hours a day. That number is now over eight. So if we're living in a world where video is the way you communicate with people for work and pleasure, we need to make sure everybody's playing in that world. Otherwise, it's not going to be a very good world.
It makes me think of how remote work leveled the playing field for introverts. Do you think Augie can help level the playing field for people who have less inclination to be on camera?
One-hundred percent. I don't know if you're following the rise of headless or faceless videos, but when I was also first pitching the company, the term at the time was Vtubers—virtual YouTubers. This was early 2023. At that time there was, I believe, 2 billion hours a month of YouTube plays for channels that had no human.
I think about it from so many angles, from people who’s identities are threatened in some way. People who are uncomfortable. People who might have a side hustle. I ask my whole team to make one Augie a week. Just try making something. Talk about your cricket match. Talk about snowboarding. Talk about what you did at work this week. Do something. I will tell you that even in a product that like ours, where you can make an AI voice, and you can use all stock content or generate everything, I still see people who are just uncomfortable being on camera. It's partially generational. It's partially access.
It levels the playing field when anyone anywhere can become a content creator and get their voice heard. That's amazing, right? It opens up these stories. When we apply that to video, I like to think it's even bigger. It's about visual storytelling, not “You have to be an on-screen personality.” Those are two very different things.
In addition to being in the Dropbox Ventures portfolio, Aug X Labs is a Dropbox customer. Could you describe how your team uses Dropbox?
We use Dropbox for all of our company assets, all of our marketing materials, all of our demo videos. We use Augie, then upload the files to Dropbox for showing to potential customer clients. We don't have super automations or things like that set up yet, but Dropbox is a key component for the team.
And during the entire fundraising process, I use DocSend (and will do so again). Actually, we'll also be using it for some of our outreach programs in the summer as well. It’s an amazing way to track the interest of a reader. For our partnership programs—such as Augie for Accelerators—DocSend helps us quickly understand what our potential partners or customers are most interested in.
The first Dropbox integration we did after the Dropbox Ventures investment last summer was so that a Dropbox user could import their assets from their Dropbox into Augie to make videos. We know there's a high overlap of people that use Dropbox who are storing videos, making marketing, content, etc. So we wanted to make it really easy to take your Dropbox content, pull it into Augie, make a video, and then bring it back to your Dropbox folder.
We’re excited to explore more collaboration features in Dropbox Replay. And we’re working together to find more opportunities where Dropbox native technology and Augie technology can leverage each other.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.