Fireside chat by Alexandar Vassilev | Webit Summer Edition 2023

Thank you so much for the invitation. It's fantastic to be here.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, about 2011 I was at YouTube, we were building the first wave of creative community back then. Technology was always a little bit deciding the side of my life. And what has happened since then, what we've seen is an incredible explosion of technology in the way that not only penetrates our lives but controls them, from the way we work to the way we live to the way we interact with each other. And what that has created is an incredible opportunity for people to bring down barriers and connect with each other, which obviously has fueled the growth of creativity and the creative space in general. And when I look at where we are today, we're looking at a 250 billion globally industry, and if you believe Goldman Sachs, that will double between now and 2027. So we have a lot to go. We're still in the midst of this incredible boom of content creation and content consumption. That being said, we have about 50 million creators globally and about four percent of them could be considered professional, meaning that they pull more than about a hundred thousand dollars a year. So there's a long way to go to build viable business models for those creators in order for them to make a living of their talent. And I believe technology will help going forward to do exactly that: bring down those barriers again, but obviously create opportunities for those folks to make a living.

Absolutely. So I believe sustainability will be the core. And I think we've talked about this topic for almost 10 years, and it's amazing to see how embedded now it is into the conversation. And not only that, but embedded in the way that people build businesses and create opportunities and build business models. For WeTransfer, we pride ourselves on being a bit of a pioneer in that space. Many, many years ago we decided to do something quite different: to focus on a sustainable business model, to care not only about the profits but also about the planet and the people. And what that has created is a bit perhaps of a slower growth over 10 years compared to some of the bigger companies out there within Silicon Valley, but now we're reaping the benefits of that decision. And I think going forward you'll see a lot of businesses being absolutely grounded in the way that their sustainability efforts play to the wider picture. And in terms of concrete example, for us sustainability is the business model. So it's not something that we have on the side, it's not that we have a team on the side thinking about it, it's embedded into every decision we make as a business. For example, last year alone we were rethinking how to better optimize our storage capabilities. We are a big AWS fan user, and we realized that that helps our users by servicing data quite quicker to them, increasing download speeds and upload speeds of our core product. But it wasn't just that optimization; it was also an opportunity for us to push our partner to be a bit greener. So we sat down with AWS, spent a significant amount of time figuring out what those efficiencies could be, and as a result we basically avoided about 2.1 megatons of CO2 in just one year of emissions by just being smart of how we do this optimization. So when bringing down costs, creating user satisfaction, and being sustainable all play into one, that's a win-win-win.

So the good news is that we are creators. WeTransfer was created by creators for creators. Before we were a tech company, we were a creative studio. What that means is that we really understand the struggles of that community. It's very much our core user base and very much the people that we want to serve and continue to solve problems. My ultimate vision is for us to connect the world with creativity, it's our North Star. We believe that there's so much untapped talent across the world, there's so much opportunity for folks to use that talent to make a living. And I think as a business we have a responsibility to enable that as much as we have. Over the last 10 years we've built a lot of trust with that community by doing things right, doing things sustainably, and thinking about them first and foremost. And I think that vision continues to extend for us and continue to accelerate. So I'm very passionate about building more and more tools and using technology in order for us to solve some of the bigger problems they have.

You know, it's interesting when we talk about big things, disruptive things, it goes back to: are you solving real problems? And if you do, then it could be something small but will have a meaningful impact on people. And over those 14 years that now we're in the business, we've built a tremendous amount of trust with our community. And we need to continue to justify that trust by building continuously products and bringing innovation to solve these problems. So for many, many years we did one thing incredibly well, which was moving digital content from one place to another, enabling folks to leverage their creativity. And over the last couple of years we've embarked on a journey to continue to accelerate at that massive stage. So last year we launched something called Portals and Reviews, which helps people interact with clients, solicit feedback, solicit approvals. This year we just launched our alpha version of our monetization component, so people can start charging for things. And going forward, we see a lot of those opportunities that today it's quite difficult to do for creators: how do you connect with your audience, how do you distribute your content directly, how do you stand out in this crazy world that we live in today. And we'll continue to ship products and innovation on that front. And of course everybody wants to talk about AI, so we can certainly talk about AI, but that's just one component of how do you figure out what are the core problems and what technology can do to solve those problems going forward.

I wouldn't say that there's something distinctly different. It's people trying to make a living, people trying to be innovative, people trying to live better lives. I think technology, if you are in my position and you lead a global technology brand, you need to think about it holistically. It's no longer just one market, whether it is the US or Europe or even Eastern Europe. It's about how do you create something that actually serves people holistically. And the interesting part, and what makes my job quite amazing when I think about strategies and approaches, is that people do different things differently in different parts of the world. And it's very easy to focus on one and create a solution and believe well that's it, I figured it out. And then you just need to spend a couple of minutes with somebody sitting in Eastern Europe or in Asia or in the Middle East, and then suddenly you start realizing, well wait a second, it's a different type of problem that I'm trying to solve. So it becomes this chicken and egg game of what is the problem, what is the solution, how does the problem push the solutions, how does the solution solve the problem. And I think you have to have that global lens, and that's why things like global presence, symptoms like interaction with your user base, really understanding these problems is the key to building that success.

Well, without being cheesy, be bold. I think that it's very easy for us to get lost a little bit in the detail of what technology can do and not do in the future, but we are shaping it. There's a lot of conversations around AI and these new technologies, but I think if we put our minds together we can really figure them out. What they can enable us is to bring down further barriers for folks across the globe to make a living, to be creative, to invent. And I think this is a stack, businesses, investors, and just as a community we have a responsibility to make the world a little better place. So we need to figure out how to be sustainable in our business models and we have to focus on the people that we want to serve. Thank you.