In this episode, Wouter sits down with Connor Zwick, founder and CEO of Speak, to talk about building one of the most ambitious consumer AI companies in the world.
Before Speak, Connor built an app in high school that became #1 in the App Store. But instead of taking VC money at 17, he spent years going deep on AI research. He then flew to South Korea, where 1% of GDP was spent on learning English and nobody could actually speak.
That decision set the foundation for everything that followed.
In this conversation, Connor shares lessons on finding product market fit, the danger of magical thinking, building with AI before anyone cared, and why the consumer AI goldrush is just getting started.
If you're a founder building in AI, this one will hit hard.
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This episode is also presented by AssemblyAI, the leading Speech AI platform. Their API gives developers access to production-ready models for transcription, speaker detection, summarization, and more. If you're building anything with voice or audio data, AssemblyAI is the standard. Check them out at
assemblyai.com/biography
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Follow Wouter: @WouterTeunissen
Follow Connor: @connorzwick
Speak: speak.com
Biography Newsletter: biography.beehiiv.com
