With AI becoming the hottest topic of last year, innovations within the industry, most notably video, are dominating the world of e-commerce.

The rise of selling through video continues to fill up our social feeds and shows no signs of slowing down. What started off as minor experimentation for many businesses has now developed into a full-blown corner of commerce that no one, not even your mother, could have predicted.

Emerging as a game-changer in influencing consumer behaviour, video generates awareness and helps educate, build trust, and SEO. It also supports power engagement between consumers and companies, helping to harness loyalty.

Recent figures from Mango Media reveal that 80% of all internet traffic is online video. In addition, according to Statista, twenty-five per cent of marketing professionals spend between one and five thousand US dollars on an average video. 

With that in mind, we decided to speak with Elisabeth L’Orange, Co-founder and CCO of AI-powered text-to-video platform Oxolo. Its technology enables businesses of all sizes to produce videos using Artificial Intelligence to generate scripts, audio, voiceovers and more.

We asked her about the concept, her ambitions for this year and how she juggles being a successful female founder with being a mother of three.

Can you tell us about yourself, what motivates you, and what led you to develop Oxolo?

My name is Elisabeth L’Orange, and I am Co-founder and CCO of generative AI start-up Oxolo. We founded the company in Hamburg in 2020 with my co-founder, Heiko Hubertz. The company aimed to develop an AI technology that can be used to create automated videos. Today, with our technology, anyone can create engaging videos, such as product videos, advertising or training videos in the corporate sector.

What makes Oxolo different from other AI-powered video solutions?

What makes us unique is how easy it is to create videos. All users have to do is copy the URL of a product, select the language and platform, and create a video created. Users can then easily make changes to the structure and script. Customer data can also be analyzed to determine which video elements promote sales and which customers reject. The AI automatically optimizes the videos to meet customer needs, so fully automated A/B testing takes over.

Can you tell us a bit about the technology behind it?

We have three main generative AI focus areas: computer vision, text-to-speech and text generation. We have our proprietary models and use off-the-shelf LLMs and computer vision models, roughly 50 in total. As we have a talking actor in the videos and all sorts of graphic assets and music, everything needs to be orchestrated and harmonized so that the right thing comes together at the right time.

Can you please describe yourself in three words?

Passionate, loyal and creative

I understand you have experience working as a VC; how did you find shifting from investment into entrepreneurship?

Running a venture fund is extremely entrepreneurial. You have to raise funds, take care of existing portfolio companies, and scout and invest in new ones. The key difference is that in the venture, your product is a financial product and with Oxolo, mine is digital. As an entrepreneur, you deal with different sets of people, but I find both sides equally interesting.

What are your key learnings on the funding environment for 2023?

The key problem was the rise in interest rates, which, in my opinion, didn’t incentivize anyone to allocate capital in more risk-prone asset classes such as venture capital. The Geopolitical situation did not help. The raising was interesting; many investors did not and still do not understand AI’s implications and were unsure how to invest. My learning was to be super prepared. It’s still very much a people’s business.

What are your predictions for the funding landscape for 2024?

I believe we’ll see a pick-up. Interest rates are coming down, and the relative attraction to equity risk reflects the changes in interest rates. In addition, many funds have been raised in ‘22 and still need to be deployed.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges of being a female founder in AI?

That there are few other women…it gets lonely when you can’t have a girl’s talk! Even though I encounter difficult situations, sometimes it’s more of a door opener, being the only woman in the room.

Do you have any advice for other female founders with families who would love to establish their tech business?

I have three children and would advise anyone to wait on founding a tech company until the youngest is in school and is somewhat independent. Working in tech is extremely intense; you are competing with the brightest minds at an incredible pace, which doesn’t leave much energy to raise a family. It’s like running a marathon and cycling the Tour de France simultaneously!

Can you tell us about your ambitions for Oxolo for the year ahead?

Our goal is to become the “Canva of AI videos” and the technology and market leader in this field in the foreseeable future. To achieve this, we are constantly working on further developingdeveloping our platform, which uses fully automated processes to generate customized videos for all our customers to convey their content in the best possible way.