Tom Livne, founder and CEO, Verbit

Our guest in this 35th interview with a unicorn start-up leader is Verbit CEO and founder Tom Livne. 

The Verbit Company serves as an essential partner to 2,000+ businesses and institutions. Verbit’s vertical-built voice AI transcription solution that provides its partners with the tools they need to offer engaging and equitable experiences that not only meet accessibility guidelines, but make verbal information searchable and actionable.  

Tom started his career as a lawyer, so he was directly facing the transcription problem in his profession. Eventually, his eagerness to solve the problem came from being a frustrated customer, so he imagined there was a better way of doing things. In just a few years since its founding in 2017, Verbit has grown into a unicorn company with a $2B valuation and a global presence. Verbit employs the largest professional captioner workforce in the world and has emerged as the leader in the $30B transcription industry. 

In this episode, Tom explains how Verbit, which has a workforce of 600 employees and +35,000 freelancers across the globe, approaches communications and engagement. According to Tom, one of the most important lessons he has learnt over the last five years is you cannot build a company alone: it’s all about the people. He says, “always hire people that you feel you could work for them too.” 

Two of the most critical areas that Verbit’s culture focuses on are creating more jobs for people to work from home and accessibility. Tom is excited about the opportunity that his business generates for people with disabilities and, curiously, that’s where his company name comes from too. He thought about the process of looking for verbal information, just as a transcription is, and “just Verb-it!” came to him. And the rest is history, he says.  

Finally, Tom shares a piece of communications advice for those who want to succeed in business: patience is key. When he was younger, he states, he didn’t have as much patience, and he believes this ability to choose balance over impulsiveness in communications is one of the key factors that affect the performance of the business. Tom also explains that especially when working remotely, “you need to make sure you’re investing in tools, and you know how to communicate as a professional.” 

The interview, as usual, was co-hosted with Russell Goldsmith of the csuite podcast. 

We have distilled the most valuable, actionable insights from our first 15 interviews with leaders of unicorn companies and bottled them in our book ‘Growing without borders: The unicorn CEO guide to communication and culture’. You can download it here.