Synthesia co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli has become one of Europe's leading voices on AI, despite starting far from the traditional technology path.
Growing up in Denmark, Lipalberg often felt uncomfortable with its consensus-driven culture.
“It's a great place, but it's not a place that inspires ambition, drive and innovation,” he told CNBC's Steve Sedgwick on the podcast “Executive Decisions.”
He immersed himself in books and computers, developing what he calls a “rebellious” mindset and a knack for spotting trends early on.
Riparbelli's ambitions led him to study abroad for a semester at Stanford University and eventually to the startup scene in London, where he came across the groundbreaking research paper “Face-to-Face.”
“This is one of the first papers [on artificial intelligence] It used a neural network to actually generate new data, in this case a video of people talking, which looked quite realistic,” Lipalveli said.
He describes it as a lightbulb moment, and the idea launched the company that would become Synthesia. But convincing investors was difficult at first.
“We challenged a lot of people, over 100 people, and we were turned down by most of them,” Lipalveli said.
The turning point was a cold email to billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and after 14 hours of back and forth, he invested $1 million. Riparbelli said the experience highlighted how important buy-in is when proposing unconventional ideas.
“If you have to convince them both of your vision and that you're the right person to work on it, that's very difficult,” he says.
With Synthesia's most recent valuation at $4 billion, Riparbelli has big decisions to make as the company prepares for its next chapter.
“Our goals are very big. To reach $1 billion in revenue, we will probably need to be multi-product,” he said.
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