179: Democratizing Content Creation: Shivali Goyal on Trupeer’s AI-Powered Magic for L&D

Holly Owens (00:00.981)
Hello everyone and welcome to another amazing episode of EdUp L &D. My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host. And I always say I'm excited, but I'm super excited today. I'm really looking forward to this episode because I have Shavali here who's the founder of Trupeer.ai and she is going to tell us all about the different things that she's done in her professional life. But Shavali, welcome to the show.

Shivali (00:26.83)
Thank you so much, Holly, for having me. It's really a pleasure.

Holly Owens (00:31.575)
Of course. Well, we're excited to get into everything Tru peer But before we do that, tell us a little bit about who you are, your journey, where you've been, all the things the audience wants to know. How did you become a founder of this wonderful company?

Shivali (00:45.534)
Absolutely. yeah, so like, like you already mentioned, newsflash, I'm the founder of Trupeer.ai But yeah, like, like everybody else, my journey didn't start as a founder, of course, I started actually like very unconventionally, I started working at a very large corporation very early into my career. In fact, my first ever work experience was a Boston consulting group as a management consultant.

Holly Owens (01:12.374)
Ow.

Shivali (01:14.134)
So that's as large an organization as it can get. But I was really, really interested in technology from the beginning. So even at BCG, I used to do large scale technology implementations and transformation projects. And that's how my journey with technology started. But then very quickly, I realized that like,

large corporations don't give you like the full room to explore your potential, right? And you want to be able to be at the forefront of innovation. So I decided to move to startups, right? So just to sort of learn how to build my own startup, I first started working at a really big ed tech startup. Then I moved into another FinTech startup, you know, in founding roles, operating roles. And that really gave me a first hand view of how to actually

Holly Owens (01:42.881)
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Shivali (02:06.434)
build a stardom from scratch. So obviously the logical next step was to actually build something of my own. And it so happened that I was also really interested in AI on the side, right? So I used to do a lot of my own experimentation and tinkering with, you know, what can we do with AI? What interesting things can happen? And some of those explorations led into some interesting projects. And I started working with a couple of companies and that's how sort of the idea for

tru peer came about and once I had enough conviction I decided to move out of my job and start this from scratch. So it started like late last year but we've been growing the team and the business ever since.

Holly Owens (02:51.207)
Yeah, people know the name now. mean, going like a year in, was just, it's something to be said about your marketing, of course, and about the person that you are, that you spread the information very well. And I love your journey, know, like getting to know all the things about how to do this and then actually doing it yourself. know, oftentimes people will feel a little bit scared to take that leap into something of their own, but you did it. You've done it.

Shivali (03:19.71)
Yeah, absolutely. It's scary but once you do it, it's like that adrenaline is like nothing else. You feel like you'll do nothing else. Yeah.

Holly Owens (03:28.907)
That adrenaline, yeah. Yeah. So tell us like for the audience that doesn't know and of course we'll have all the information in the show notes about where you can access Tru Peer and get to know more about the company. But tell us what is Tru Peer and what does it do for L &D professionals? Because I know like I've used it and it's just something I'll let you talk. I'll let you talk about it. I'm not going to give too much away.

Shivali (03:54.54)
Yeah, for sure. know, you know, the way that we like to describe it, right? Like if you, if you just look at what's happening today in the world of software is that it's become so much easier to build software with AI, right? Like you can write code with ChatGPD, Cloud, et cetera. But when it comes about actually communication of around the software or the products, right? Like essentially training people on how to use that software, onboarding users on it.

even marketing it, selling it, right? There's that communication layer or the content layer, which is still really, really broken. And it's really hard to create that professional quality content today, right? So what we have essentially created is almost like democratized that content creation for software and products, right? So what you essentially do is just like Loom, for example, you take a rough screen recording.

Holly Owens (04:26.429)
Yeah.

Shivali (04:52.67)
of anything that you want to show on your screen, but that's where the magic happens. Like that rough screen recording then gets magically transformed into a really professional quality video, as well as like a professional guide, all written out for you and all made for you completely automatically so that you don't have to put any of the effort into creation of that great content, right? So now you can publish videos, guides.

Holly Owens (05:11.594)
Yeah.

Shivali (05:20.544)
in a matter of minutes and at one hundredth the cost that it usually takes. So essentially like learning or L and D, like we say, gets transformed completely for for this sort of area. Right. You can join so much content at scale and you can make sure it's really high quality. You can make sure it's personalized to the users. You can make sure it's in the language that the users actually want to listen to. Right.

So all of that gets unlocked because of the power of AI.

Holly Owens (05:54.519)
I love it too. I wanted to say this at beginning, but I wanted you to explain it first. The fact that how much time it saves L &D professionals, because we spend so much time creating how-to guides, instructor guides, videos. Those are whole projects within themselves. And thinking about standard operating procedures for a company, you just put that all in the troop here, and then it's this nice, clean layout, and it has its multimodal.

which we love as instructional designers for accessibility purposes. And it's just like, okay, so now we can really focus on like, what's the next step or like thinking about truly what we need to do for the learners instead of having to worry about like, did we have grammatical errors or did this video get messed up somewhere or did we not mention, you we didn't add the captions, the captioning and all that stuff is there. So that's one of the reasons I was really drawn to it because I'm like, my goodness.

This is gonna save me so much time, but also too is the fact that how intuitive and easy it is to use. Like it's not something like you mentioned Loom, you know, some other ed tech companies or technology companies where there's like a vast amount of features, but this is just so easy to implement.

Shivali (07:12.138)
Yeah, and that was the core idea, right? Like the idea is to bring that professional video creation to everybody, right? Like an L &D professional does not need to be like a professional video editor or a script writer, but today they have to be, right? Because the tools are just so complex and they're made for someone who knows all of those finer things. So the idea was that if you're able to explain something to a friend, you should be able to create a professional video. So let's

Holly Owens (07:25.576)
Right. Right.

Shivali (07:41.706)
AI handle all of that heavy lifting and you can just focus on talking through what you want to communicate.

Holly Owens (07:48.395)
Right, yeah, that's, I mean, that's, if it was my dream, like maybe 10 years ago as an L and D professional to have a technology, it would be this one. Cause we, I've worked through so many different tools and so many different, like when I stepped out of teaching, I was an e-learning developer for about six to 12 months and we had to create instructor guides. And I was like, my gosh, it is so.

taxing. It takes so long and you have to it was for the military so it was like try care of the health care so it had to be very by the book. This would have helped tremendously. So tell us a little bit about what are some of your favorite features or what have you heard from some of your customers when they're the feedback that you're getting about Truepeer and what do they love the most? I know what I love the most but what are you hearing or what are some of your favorite features?

Shivali (08:24.812)
Yeah.

Shivali (08:43.278)
Absolutely. think like, obviously the aha moment or that magical moment is the first time someone experiences it, right? Like, so I would actually urge everybody who's listening to actually try it out themselves. But like, as soon as you take a screen recording and you click on generate, it automatically creates that really great AI video and a step-by-step guide for you in 30 seconds, right? So that's something that you're like, okay, how did it?

Holly Owens (09:07.711)
right?

Shivali (09:10.39)
happened, like how did it understand everything that I said, how did it understand whatever I was doing and how did it create like a really professional output from it. So that's obviously that transformation itself is something that people really love. But I think on top of that, there are a lot of workflows that we have built to enable that ease of then the final fine tuning, right? Like for example, the editor is built out in a way that you can easily edit the text, for example, like

Holly Owens (09:33.835)
Right.

Shivali (09:40.302)
while recording, let's say you missed out on something or you misspelled something or you want to address someone specifically, right? You don't have to do any retakes. You can just edit the text in the video script and it'll automatically get adjusted. Yeah. So you won't have to do any retakes. You won't have to do any editing. You can do any number of changes in your script and automatically all of that gets adjusted and synced perfectly, right?

Holly Owens (09:53.204)
Right. that is so amazing. Yes.

Shivali (10:10.102)
Like editing video is as easy as editing text in Truepeer. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one. Then the other thing is, you know, translation as a feature, right? Like we've seen in a lot of scenarios that people have to just make do with single language videos because of their own comfort in that language. But the users or the employees or, you know, people who actually have to watch them may be comfortable in some other language. Right. So

Holly Owens (10:14.23)
I love it. That's a great one.

Holly Owens (10:38.346)
bright.

Shivali (10:39.338)
Now we have one click translate where for every guide or every video you create, you can select out of 40, 50 languages, any language you want. And then in one click, all of that content gets automatically translated, including the video. So you can now have that same process being explained in 10 different languages for 10 different types of users. Then the next thing is for AI personalization.

Holly Owens (10:55.509)
Yeah.

Shivali (11:08.338)
One thing is to create a basic video output from your recording. But let's say you want it to be in a specific tone, or you want it to be like a sales demo, or you want it to be like an instructional video, or you want it to be a product manual. So you can actually choose that AI template, or you can instruct the AI to automatically change the content as per that. So you don't...

Holly Owens (11:35.082)
Yeah.

Shivali (11:35.51)
need to be like really good at marketing. But if you instruct the AI that, make it in a marketing way or add a little bit of a marketing tone to it, it'll actually do that for you. Right. So now we have engineers making marketing videos because, you know, AI just adds that context on top.

Holly Owens (11:47.316)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (11:51.25)
Yeah!

so cool. mean, like, yeah, and part of that too is like, Trupeer is really a universal language for everybody. I love the fact that you can translate into different languages for people because like you're saying, it's, know, I know English is the most common language used around the world, but a lot of different countries, it's just there's just so many different languages out there. And I think also, too, I love accessibility stuff that's great for accessibility.

You know for giving access to everyone so you're really thinking on on a greater level here to give people Everyone has access which I can really truly appreciate And I know that people in our audience to appreciate that as well

Shivali (12:38.058)
Absolutely, absolutely. Like we've had so many customers come up to us and tell us, okay, this is the first time we're able to make these videos for that audience. Otherwise, they just used to have to make do with English videos. Yeah.

Holly Owens (12:53.138)
Yeah. Well, you just made a big announcement. I saw some things in the news. Do want to tell us a little bit about that?

Shivali (13:02.22)
Yeah, absolutely. So we actually just announced our seed round of $3 million from RTP Global and CFOs. Thank you. Thank you so much. Obviously, like, fundraise is never a milestone. It's just an input to what we have plans to do, but really excited about its potential to be able to, for us to expand our team. And like we discussed, like,

Holly Owens (13:10.518)
Congratulations.

Shivali (13:29.612)
This product has global potentials. We want it to reach everybody around the world. So it'll just help us accelerate that.

Holly Owens (13:32.331)
Mmm.

Holly Owens (13:38.177)
That's fantastic. And I'm so glad to hear, know, especially, and you might be able to speak to this a little bit, like around the world, there's some different things happening. And I can speak what's happening in United States with some funding and like people were saying that funding is getting cut or they don't have access to the resources. So, you know, this funding definitely gives you the access to give the support to the, to the customers. Can you, maybe just talk a little bit about like being a founder and like,

trying to find those resources and what that situation's like. Because I know there's a lot of people in the audience who may be thinking about starting their own thing and they're just like, I don't even know where to begin. So maybe if you tap in that a little bit and give our audience some insider scoop.

Shivali (14:21.612)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the first thing that I would actually like to say from my own experience is that, you know, it's become so much easier to build products now, right, with AI. Like, it just enhances your capability so much more. So I would, in fact, suggest that for anybody who wants to try something or start up at their own level, doesn't, like funding doesn't even need to be like a necessary condition anymore, right?

Holly Owens (14:50.876)
Yeah, that's true.

Shivali (14:51.49)
There are so many startups that are now bootstrapped to like $5 million, $10 million in annual revenue, which is amazing, right? That's something that was never possible before. But now because you have that capability in marketing, you have coding agents, you have so much that you can do with AI that you'd need much less resources, right? So that would actually be my first, you know,

Holly Owens (15:02.123)
Yeah.

Shivali (15:20.13)
comment here. like, regarding funding as well, what I would say is that, you know, in AI, at least, there is a lot of, there's a lot of funding interest, right? So if you look at traditional software, you will obviously see less and less interest because you know, the whole world is now moving to AI instead of software, right? So if there are interesting ideas around AI, there are still a lot of people who are willing to fund it.

Holly Owens (15:32.117)
Yeah.

Shivali (15:49.102)
And I think angel investments is also becoming like a very big way to source funding, which is to say that you don't have to go for really big institutional investors, right? You can actually crowd source funding from people who are relevant in your space. So let's say if you have a really good L &D idea, you can actually reach out to like L &D leaders across companies. And if they like it, you can just set up an angel list.

Holly Owens (15:59.159)
Yeah.

Shivali (16:15.072)
account and get them to fund you. Right. And that's enough for you to get started.

Holly Owens (16:17.684)
Yeah, it makes it that easy. I'm fast. I'm really intently listening because I've never been on that side of it before. And it's fascinating to me that now like you don't have to worry about, you know, like here just speaking from the state's state side is that, you know, going after those big companies, I think that was really a challenge and that probably made a lot of companies in the past, like they would just give up or they would just say that quote unquote fail, but they just didn't, you know, this kind of stuff just didn't exist. It's so cool.

Shivali (16:47.852)
Yeah, and like people are really interested. Like I see a lot of interest from people who are experienced in a space to want to invest in startups in that space, right? Because they want to leverage their domain knowledge. They want to be able to support those ideas because they have conviction in those ideas. So angel investment is actually becoming like a really big thing. Like even for us, for example, a lot of CIOs, CXOs, CTOs came

upfront that they wanted to invest in the idea because they believed in it so much. So, you know, we ended up getting a lot of those and, know, it's win-win, right? They obviously get exposure to the startup and success and we get access to their experience and their networks.

Holly Owens (17:20.587)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (17:31.509)
Yeah, absolutely. What a fun position to be in. Well, fun and probably anxiety at certain times. But I want to ask you because we have a lot of people, and I was mentioning this before we started recording, in the audience that are transitioning out into different careers. I myself made the leap that I'm just not going to be working for somebody else anymore. I'm going to be working for me, do some side hustle stuff, do this podcast. I don't necessarily need funding for the podcast, but

So for those people who are thinking about stepping into this world, maybe doing a startup or an entrepreneur, what's like three pieces of advice you would say, like somebody sitting here, they're listening and they're like, I want to start this, but I'm just scared to, you know, what advice could you give them?

Shivali (18:18.69)
Yeah, I would say that the first and foremost thing is to not have, to not really worry about building like a full scale product or for like, especially if you're building a tech startup, just build a really, really quick and easy prototype, right? Like a lot of ideas actually start as Instagram pages or, you know, they may actually start as just a chatty-peaty wrapper.

but that's enough for you to validate whether it actually has potential and it solves a real problem. So that would definitely be my number one recommendation that don't ever think of building a sophisticated product as a barrier to starting up. just, you know.

Holly Owens (19:06.23)
Like you need to have everything like people strive for perfection too much In in corporate America, we call that MLP a minimal lovable product Yeah

Shivali (19:10.933)
Exactly.

Shivali (19:15.902)
Exactly. Like, for example, if you if you want to do something in fashion or whatever, right, like you can just start an Instagram page for it. Or if you want to do something in L &D, maybe you start a Udemy course around it or you know, essentially, start small, validate it and then just think of scaling it, right. That's number one. And the second thing I would say is like, talk to customers really quickly, right? Like,

Holly Owens (19:29.664)
Yeah.

Shivali (19:45.25)
potential customers. And this is something that I've also learned a lot that, know, founders start to think too much in their head and they start to sort of, you know, that confirmation bias steps in that, yes, this makes sense. Right. But as soon as you start talking to customers, a lot of that can get, get, shattered very quickly, or it can get double the validation. Right. So even when you're talking to customers, try to be

Holly Owens (19:57.398)
Yeah.

Shivali (20:11.96)
Try to expect them to be as brutal as possible, right? Don't look for signals that actually validate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Holly Owens (20:17.268)
You need thick skin in this game, for sure. Constructive criticism is everywhere and you need to take it. Absolutely.

Shivali (20:25.25)
Yeah, and tell your customers to be brutal with you, right? Like there's this book, you know, that talks about the mom test, right? That, you know, if you're asking your mom, she'll obviously be really awesome about it and she'll be like, this is the most loveliest idea I've ever heard, but that's not really validation. So look for criticism. That's really important. Yeah, and I guess the third thing is like, have really strong

Holly Owens (20:28.63)
Mm-hmm.

Shivali (20:54.51)
support in terms of co-founders, right? I think solo journeys are possible, but having a co-founder or a couple of co-founders is just a 10x multiplier, right? Because startups are just so lonely as an experience and they're so draining that you always need someone who can pull you up when you're down, right? And vice versa, right? So that's something that always helps. Like in my case as well, like my co-founder does that for me all the time.

Holly Owens (21:06.986)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (21:17.835)
Right.

Shivali (21:24.532)
and I do for him, right? But yeah, like it's just more joyful also because then you get to share that journey, the ups and downs with somebody.

Holly Owens (21:26.944)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (21:34.55)
Yeah, it's like it's a great partnership. It's great, you know, to bounce ideas off of other people because a lot of the time when you said you're sitting in like maybe with these blinders on and you don't realize what's happening because you're doing so many different things for the company. True Peer is great. I loved, you know, trying it out and I can definitely say and advocate for L &D professionals to go try it out. We'll have everything in the show notes about that.

Shavali, there anything else that you, before we wrap up the episode that you want to mention about Tru peer yourself? Tell us where to find you. Tell us all the things. Like I said, we're going to have everything in the show notes, but is there anything else you want to share?

Shivali (22:14.978)
Yeah, absolutely. think like I said before, like, we've made the experience in a way that anybody can try it. So I would, you know, really recommend anybody who's listening to just go to www.truppia.ai to sign up and create a bunch of videos and you will experience the magic yourself. Yeah, and

Holly Owens (22:34.228)
Yeah, and it is magical, it very magical people, be ready.

Shivali (22:39.15)
Yeah, absolutely. And then if it looks interesting or if there's something that you want to discuss, then please reach out to me on LinkedIn. We can probably drop my LinkedIn details in the show notes as well.

Holly Owens (22:51.548)
Yeah, it was gonna I think I think it was put in the guest intake. So we're definitely gonna have all the places to find you as well.

Shivali (22:57.358)
Yeah, but yeah, that's about it. Like, always love to collaborate and discuss and especially because L &D is such a close topic to us as well. Like, would love to collaborate on how we can make it even better for L &D professionals around the

Holly Owens (23:12.788)
Yeah, you're really changing lives, L &D professionals, and making things so much easier for us. So we appreciate that. I can probably speak for the audience in saying this. Thank you for coming on and sharing your experiences about Trupeer and all the advice for the audience. Like I said, everything can be found in the show notes or where to reach out to Shavali or go to Trupeer and access the tool. It's wonderful. So you need to try it out. So thanks so much for coming on.

Shivali (23:39.512)
Thank you, Holly. It was lovely.