A Journey from Academia to Innovative AI Entrepreneurship

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Michael Lingelbach, CEO and co-founder of Hedra, a company specializing in long-form generative video and agentic AI solutions. In just over a year, Michael and his team have seen explosive growth and raised backing from leading tech investors, including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

From marketing and social media campaigns to corporate training videos, Hedra’s technology is revolutionizing how we produce immersive, human-like content at scale. Michael and I discuss the power of agentic AI, the ethical dimensions of automated digital creation, and how he’s charting new paths for startups, enterprises, and content creators alike.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• We’re still very early in ‘generative media’. Stable Diffusion came out 2 years ago for images; video models have been maturing rapidly, but right now they’re focused on small fragments of content rather than cohesive brand storytelling. Building models that can not only generate compelling dialogue performances but also incorporate consistent identities and assets is a challenging research problem, and we’re pushing on it.

• When people first think about generative AI, they think about increasing the volume of content, but that typically isn’t a problem. The predominant concern of most marketers now is engagement. We live in a limited attention economy, so the focus now – in my opinion – is how to make really good content that’s going to hook people.

• For short-form content, you’re usually trying to hook the viewer’s attention in the first 5-10 seconds as they’re scrolling through a TikTok-style feed. You want bright colours, a crazy character, or a hook like “OMG you’re not going to believe what we’re going to talk about today!” With long-form content, you’re optimising for retention. You still want the viewer to be engaged, but usually, they want information or entertainment.

• We think the big opportunity is making it accessible for product/social marketing managers to have access to this powerful technology to generate video and to have a workflow where they’re working together with AI to make compelling content. That doesn’t require them to outsource to an external agency. We then get rapid feedback cycles rather than drawn-out ones when you’re working with an external partner. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘We’re focused on bringing this technology from something that’s fun to play with to something that’s a strong part of an enterprise/brand marketing workflow.’

‘Are you conveying information that makes the user feel like you’re conveying information that’s also usable for them? That’s the job of a content creator.’

‘Video is the most natural form of communication; people have been talking to each other face-to-face for a long time!’

‘Video is a massive market, and it’s growing rapidly; it’s where most advertising, marketing information, learning, and spending is shifting towards.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Michael Lingelbach is the CEO and co-founder of Hedra. While pursuing his PhD at Stanford, Michael worked closely with world-renowned AI researchers and developed a deep interest in pushing the boundaries of long-form video generation. 

Seeing an opportunity to combine advanced visual models with natural, human-centered dialogue, he set out to create a platform that produces fully generated video and immersive, conversational virtual avatars.

Under Michael’s leadership, Hedra attracted early backing from top-tier investors, including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Since launching publicly in 2023, the company has grown its user base to over one million registered users, earning recognition from both independent creators and major enterprises. 

Hedra’s generative video technology now powers cutting-edge use cases ranging from marketing and social media content to more complex interactive experiences.

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.

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