This week, Tom Shapland shares his journey from agriculture tech to founding Canonical, a tool that helps voice AI developers understand and improve conversations by mapping call stages.
Tom has deep experience in the voice world—we loved this conversation and we’re sure you will too!
Links
https://canonical.chat
https://x.com/Tom_Shapland
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-shapland-b4494212/
Chapters
0:00 - Intro
1:05 - Welcome and first AI moment
3:03 - Computer vision for thirsty plants
5:50 - Explaining AI to farmers
7:52 - Hardware is hard
8:31 - Non-VC shaped business struggles
16:51 - Starting a new company
19:41 - From metrics to conversation stages
22:42 - Voice AI evolution
26:40 - Balancing determinism and freedom
29:53 - Who uses Canonical and when
32:39 - Don't make your agent spell anything
35:52 - Zero to 80% is easy, production is hard
39:28 - Future of voice AI adoption
42:21 - Book recommendations and closing
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