Hi HN - Hassaan, Quinn & Rishabh here and we're the founders of Tavus (https://tavus.io/). We generate personalized videos that realistically imitate your gestures and voice. See a short demo at https://video.tavus.io/video?id=2302 and play with it at https://tavus.io/playground/.
Companies like Loom and Vidyard have proven the value of personalized videos for sales, onboarding, marketing, and more. The problem is the time it takes to create a video for each prospect. We make it scalable by generating thousands of personalized videos of you in the time it would take to record one. Our users get the benefits of personalized videos, like large increases in open and reply rates, without having to invest all that time.
We struggled with LinkedIn outreach and email marketing at every company we all worked at. It took too many emails and felt spammy. The best responses we got were from emails that we wrote specifically for clients we were particularly interested in. We then tried our hand at video marketing, with generic videos sent to each lead over LinkedIn, which ultimately performed much better than any traditional campaigns we ran.
What if we personalized the videos like we personalize emails at scale? We decided to test that, and the results were incredible. People loved the fact that we sent natural videos with our own voices and faces, and we achieved massive increases in demos booked (250% spike). The sales industry is seeing this shift towards more individualized video content as well; companies like Loom are growing rapidly and seeing validating results such as 4x meetings booked. We also found that these videos perform well outside of sales and marketing, specifically in recruiting, onboarding, and customer success.
To get started with Tavus, users train an AI model with their voice and face, by submitting a 15 minute video recording. Next they set up a base video template(s) that includes the pitch that they will be giving in the video, along with the associated branded landing page and video background. Once that is set up, videos can be generated at the click of a button. One-off videos can be generated in the Tavus portal, or a CSV can be uploaded to process videos in bulk. Videos can also be generated programmatically through the Tavus API. Each video is automatically personalized in the userâs voice for each unique prospect, and can even automatically generate unique backgrounds, such as a prospects LinkedIn profile or website.
People donât notice imperfections if the content is interesting to them, and unless you are specifically looking for artifacts, Tavus videos are practically indiscernible from a manually recorded video. Therefore our focus is not on generating the most advanced voice-cloning or lip syncingâplenty of great researchers can do that way better than we ever could. Instead it is to provide many immersive personalization options that cater to the customers' leads. A recruiting company can use video outreach very differently than a sales company, and so on. Our core effort is supporting each of those use cases in depth.
Also, people donât trust videos that have professional green-screen backgrounds, perfect lighting and a voice actor recording for you. They want to see you, see that you are real, they want to hear your voice. In our experience, slight imperfections in your video can actually lead to better outcomes as long as you get the content right, as they make for a more engaging experience. The point is not to fool people into thinking that a recording is fully ânaturalâ but to provide them an immersive experience that is personally relevant to them.
Our revenue is generated from a subscription model. These subscriptions typically include things like video strategy consulting, branded landing pages, and a quota of videos that can be generated per month,
We would love to get your feedback on Tavus, and in particular, hear any ideas you have! Weâre super excited about this product, and weâve got a lot of work ahead of us :) Thank you!
4 years ago by spywaregorilla
I think this feels very manipulative. I don't really buy that the authors have general ambitions and aren't just interested in making bank in sales, because that's exactly what they say they're going to do in the video. I see a couple notes about video game characters talking to you directly... This tech is not the reason that problem is difficult but whatever.
The thing the urks me about this is not so much the ML, but... who actually wants personalized video ads? I think it is very uncomfortable for people you don't know to say your name like they know a lot about you. This would be be awful to me even it were paid actors, costs be damned. This gives the privacy problem a human face and, imo, makes it much more discomforting. What kind of marketing context makes it feel appropriate to send a personalized video message that will be warmly received but also cost prohibitive to actually make one?
Not familiar with Loom or Vidyard, but really this whole premise seems really creepy, neural nets or otherwise. It smells like the the ads that proclaim HOT SINGLES WANT TO CHAT TO BOYS IN {your age range} in {your town}.
4 years ago by kyletns
I have received video pitches like this, as cold emails in my inbox, from people I don't know, with a thumbnail to a video that I just had to click to see wtf was going on. The guy in the video said my name and where I work while giving his pitch for some random product irrelevant to my life or my work.
It was completely unnerving and creepy af.
The fact that this startup wants to automate this creepy invasive behavior tells me that the founders need to do some serious soul-searching about why they want to create the world they're working to create.
4 years ago by spoonjim
Why? $$$.
4 years ago by hassaanr
Totally understand your viewpoint. The reality is though that sales is really just one use case and definitely not my (our) favorite. Our focus is more on product experiences and that's where most of our efforts are going towards now.
The video doesn't have to be personalized to your name or contextual information about you specifically, although that is the most exciting prospect for most people. It could be a topic you're interested in being visualized.
We're working with an e-learning company for example to help instructors create their courses more easily in their own voice. To me that's a more exciting use case. If you're interested to learn more about how our roadmap is focusing on use cases such as this feel free to reach out.
4 years ago by ryanianian
This is about as manipulative as it gets. What's the angle other than "haha we tricked you into thinking we were actually personally invested in this pitch"?
Right in your description you say:
> [People] want to see you, see that you are real, they want to hear your voice.
Yet that's exactly what this product takes away.
4 years ago by burkaman
I've been tricked in the past by a very convincing "personalized" recruiting email that I later realized was auto-generated. It gave me an incredibly negative impression of the company and the product, and I've told the story to a lot of people and never met anyone that likes the idea.
So the only way for this company to succeed is if their videos are so good that the targets never realize they're fake. I'm no entrepreneur, but it doesn't seem ideal if your business model is literally based on lies.
Not to mention, if the technology is that good, then it will be trivial to abuse this for corporate espionage, phishing, blackmail, slander, etc. Sure, if they don't do it, someone else will, but that's never been a valid excuse.
4 years ago by hassaanr
Oof sorry to hear you had that experience. Not everyone wants generated content and that totally makes sense.
To us this is the next evolution to something like MailChimp or as another commenter mentioned- handwriting style fonts in marketing material.
As for abuse- we are heavily focused on making sure our platform is not abused. There are multiple checks in place to make sure only you can generate videos with your voice/face.
4 years ago by burkaman
I mean, fake realistic handwriting fonts are universally hated, otherwise you'd see people using them for wedding thank you notes or other legitimate purposes. I've only seen them used in extended car warranty scams and similar.
And I'm sure you've thought about the abuse potential and you're doing what you can, but what's going to happen when accounts get hacked? Companies already have to train their employees to be wary of emails impersonating their CEO ("please wire me $10,000 immediately for a high profile account"), and it's going to be much harder to train everyone to mistrust video or even live video calls if Tavus works quickly. I guess it's inevitable, but again, you don't have to be the ones to bring that future to life.
4 years ago by hassaanr
Totally understand this perspective. The end goal is to provide more immersive product experiences beyond just sales. Use cases that wouldnât be able to have a personal touch at all because of the scalability issue of making individual videos.
Sales unfortunately does have unsavory aspects to it that we at HN especially dislike
4 years ago by cma
Are maketing fliers allowed to use fonts that look scuffy--like from an old typesetting machine--even if they were put together on a computer?
Maketing materials are always in an arms race, a new graphic design trend comes out that takes a lot of work and becomes a quality/investment signal, then people figure out how to automate it and it suddenly looks passe.
4 years ago by hassaanr
Totally agree. The thought is that this is the next evolution of mailmerge. A different way to consume the same content!
4 years ago by pierre
You are leaking all the generated video thanks to consecutive ids. However it allowed me to browse through what was generated and it make for a stronger sales pitch / give a better idea of how this can be used. The internet marketing for law firm video pitch work well, and if you could customise the content of the video (like dashboard url) they will be even more powerful.
What is less clear from your website, is are you just handling the generation of the video, or their distribution also? Is there any integration with ad platform? Could I just send you an excel spreadsheet with video variable and a target email in the column?
4 years ago by bradhe
https://video.tavus.io/video?id=2329
will be interesting to see who writes them a check :)
4 years ago by hassaanr
Shhhhh :â)
4 years ago by hassaanr
Weâll be moving to unique IDs this week, good catch :)
The background content is customizable and dynamic per video, you can pass in a different URL for each video.
Currently we are only handling the generation of the video- not distribution just yet.
4 years ago by breakfastduck
Probably the kind of thing you should do before posting a launch HN
4 years ago by ukd1
Ya, there are some interesting ones - looks like they sent videos to their entire batch, at least.
4 years ago by colinmorelli
Genuine question that I hope isn't interpreted as criticism.
I'm curious how this ultimately scales. I'd bite on believing that these videos can convert better than a boring templated email, but I'd also assume most of that lift is because they're different and enough users haven't caught on to the fact that these are generated.
When people talk about personalized email working better than automated outreach, they usually mean actually personalized emails, which contain at least one sentence that is not just placeholder substitution. Templated emails with substituted variables are usually easy to spot, as evidenced by the number of "I'm really interested in what you're doing at Stealth Startup" messages in my email/LinkedIn.
So, to my question: do you think the lift in conversion you've seen in early tests is sustainable? As people start to understand that this is the new marketing tactic, do you think the average person becomes more aware of it and starts to believe that most videos in their inbox are probably just auto-generated also? Ditto for other use cases. If people like their video-generated product walkthrough because it feels personal, what happens when they start to realize it's almost certainly not?
4 years ago by nmca
This idea features in Greg Egan's novel "Distress" as one of the dystopian elements.
It's a great novel; but this idea is pretty horrifying.
4 years ago by hassaanr
Iâll have to give that one a read!
For sales and marketing I definitely see HN crowd cringing a bit. However there are a lot of applications beyond such as onboarding, coaching, e-learning where we can build a sense of connection that otherwise wasnât possible.
4 years ago by protoduction
Maybe it's a silly question, but do you think that putting a small message at the start or in the corner saying it's computer-generated would help or hurt?
I personally would feel it is less manipulative and think of it higher.. but perhaps your goal is so people never find out?
4 years ago by hassaanr
Not a silly question at all! This is something we're still figuring out- when there should be disclosure that the video is generated. For some use cases (sales) it might hurt, however for others (e-learning) it might not matter at all.
4 years ago by jasonlfunk
This is really interesting. I think people find personal videos more engaging because they /know/ they aren't spam. If this technology becomes mainstream, I imagine that people will start to think about these types of videos in the same way.
4 years ago by undefined
4 years ago by faeyanpiraat
This is just a sleazy marketing tactic, no matter how you sugar coat it.
Do we really need more manipulation in the world?
4 years ago by verdverm
Stuff like this should have a warning label, "generated by a machine" or something similar
4 years ago by hassaanr
Interesting point! Weâre not looking to fool anyone. More so weâre looking to provide more personalized experiences that otherwise werenât possible because of the scalability issue. Think Tony stark personally welcoming you to an Iron Man video game :)
Would you rather be told the content is generated before or after you see the video?
4 years ago by verdverm
Absolutely before, I expect deep fakes like this to be regulated as such
4 years ago by hassaanr
Sales/marketing can definitely seem unsavory at times. Our thought is that these videos arenât much different than a personalized email through MailChimp- they just provide a new format that is more personable and consumable.
There are also use cases that were working on with tele-health companies, allowing providers to send updates that build trust with patients that they otherwise wouldnât have time for given the scale.
There are a lot of use cases to build more immersive experiences!
4 years ago by derpfake
I hate fake personalised content, whether itâs text or video is immaterial. The same is true of many of the people I work with⌠that said, these sort of products mostly stay within the sales world where gaming people is entirely acceptable and arguably encouraged. Therefore, while I hate this and Iâm sure many others here will too, I recognise its genius and expect to see it become very successful because the execution is great. Good luck (but stay away from my inbox!)
4 years ago by hassaanr
It can be scary to see the gears of the machine. Sales is tough though and if this saves an SDR from spending hours making videos we think itâs beneficial. Video messaging is becoming the norm- this is just the next evolution.
There are also so many cool use cases beyond sales!!
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