Season 2 Episode #8: In this episode of Tech Effect, we meet Dr. Varun Singh. Varun is the Chief Product Technology Officer at Daily, with over 2 decades of experience in software development. His career spans from hardware engineering on smartphone cameras to founding callstats.io, which was acquired by 8x8. Varun has contributed to WebRTC standards built into major browsers and now works at Daily, making voice, video, and AI tools accessible to developers. He is passionate about building infrastructure for voice as the next major computing interface.

Varun's tech journey and building an innovation mindset

How working on smartphone cameras taught valuable lessons about real-time processing and user needs
The importance of staying flexible and ready for change in fast-moving tech careers
Why questioning existing solutions is crucial: "Algorithms are available to anyone, but how do you know they're doing a good job?"

Building and scaling callstats.io: From startup vision to strategic exit

Why environmental factors became a huge problem for video calls during the pandemic
How call quality changes throughout the day, and why this became a business opportunity
The reality of recognizing when a business model isn't working and making tough decisions
How the growth in video calls created new market needs

The real challenges of voice AI and what it takes to build it right

How ChatGPT's simple chat interface made AI accessible
Why most voice AI failures come down to context problems that humans take for granted
The importance of building systems that know company policies and admit when they don't
How testing becomes everything when you're building AI that people actually talk to

Pipecat.ai and the future of voice as the next major interface

Building open source tools that work with 100+ services while keeping latency low
How one's voice will become as important as the mouse for interacting with computers
The challenge of managing context and memory to make voice AI feel truly conversational

Varun Singh

Chief Product Technology Officer at Daily

Dr. Varun Singh is the Chief Product Technology Officer at Daily, with over 2 decades of experience in software development. His career spans from hardware engineering on smartphone cameras to founding callstats.io, which was acquired by 8x8. Varun has contributed to WebRTC standards built into major browsers and now works at Daily making voice, video, and AI tools accessible to developers. He is passionate about building infrastructure for voice as the next major computing interface.

Josh William Burmistre-Griffiths

Digital Marketing and Paid Ad Specialist

Josh William Burmistre-Griffiths works at TestDevLab, focusing on digital marketing and paid advertising across multiple platforms. His past experience working at agencies and unicorn startups has equipped Josh with the expertise to bring valuable digital marketing insights to Tech Effect.

# 27 Varun Singh (Daily): Building Real-Time Communication & The Future Of Voice-AI

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