
Andrew Mason’s Descript raises $15M and acquires Lyrebird - bgrynol
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/descript-audio/
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par
I used to be an engineer at a startup that Groupon was acquiring. One day we
were at their Chicago HQ being interviewed by their leadership team. I was
waiting outside the conference room, feeling super nervous, when this really
tall guy with messy hair just sort of saunters over. He looked pretty aimless
and carefree. It turned out to be Mason, and he came over to talk to me. I was
super nervous, as he towered above me. But he turned out to be so nice, and
had a very calming effect. He knew about our company and even knew who I was,
I was so surprised. Since then, I've always wished the best for Andrew, as I
really believe his heart is in the right place, and he wants to build great
things. Glad to see he has a new project cooking up.

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kundan2510
Don't miss the overdub demo:
[https://www.descript.com/overdub](https://www.descript.com/overdub) and the
demo video: [https://www.descript.com/](https://www.descript.com/)

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bgrynol
People will be able to create some serious deep fakes of audio recordings with
Overdub. Where it will get really wild is when you can change the voice of the
original recording into your "voice of preference" for listening purposes. Ie-
instead of Ira Glass narrating This American Life, think what it will be like
when you can listen to TAL with Morgan Freeman narrating it!

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sbuccini
As stated in the article, Overdub forces you to read random sentences so you
can’t just feed in hours of audio. That being said, this technology is quickly
becoming commoditized and I suspect others won’t be as scrupulous.

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awakeasleep
Say what you want about Groupon overall, but Andrew was an amazing leader
during my time there. I'd be excited to work on this team.

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wtvanhest
In between Groupon and Descript he was working on a product I loved called
Detour. Our first time trying it, my wife and I lived at 24th and Valencia
(San Francisco), and we walked over to Mission and 24th for a group tour they
were launching. Detour was creating audio walking tours driven by GPS.

Keep in mind, at the time, Andrew was sitting on hundreds of millions of
dollars from Groupon.

We walked up to do the tour and to test the product. There were like 4-6
people there, and I'm sure others had already started the tour. My wife had
zero idea who he was, I vaguely knew what he looked like.

We get there and Andrew is standing there at the 24th street bart with a
Detour t-shirt on. My wife's app doesn't work, and he helps her get it
installed. He is annoyed that the software isn't working, but couldn't be
nicer. He patiently figures it out and we were off.

I told her, I think that is Andrew Mason, the guy that started this company,
and also the guy that started groupon. She laughed, and was like, no wonder he
cared so much.

I guess the point of the story is that I have zero idea what he is like to
work with from experience, but my moment meeting him, he came off as humble,
smart and nice. Most importantly someone who cared deeply about his company. I
like working for and with people like that.

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bgrynol
Thanks for sharing the story – love hearing early accounts of when companies
start!

The key takeaway from the story is that Andrew, as a founder, was willing to
roll up his sleeves, get in the dirt and talk directly with customers to get
early feedback. He didn't use his liquidity and profile to hire someone else
to do this – that would have been too easy. A good founder will always start
at the foundation, and build from the ground up.

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adbrebs
More information: [https://medium.com/descript/introducing-descript-podcast-
stu...](https://medium.com/descript/introducing-descript-podcast-
studio-13b8da53311b)

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aiscapehumanity
Revolutionary stuff

