Deepfakes, Trust & Selling Video To The Mainstream

HeyGen CMO Andrew Mok says the AI video generation platform is focused on building trust as it pushes synthetic video into mainstream business use, addressing deepfake concerns by emphasizing transparency and consent in its tools. The company, which offers AI avatars and video generation, aims to make video production accessible to non-technical users while maintaining ethical safeguards.

Open Source CEO by Bill Kerr ../ - Posts - Deepfakes, Trust & Selling Video To The Mainstream Deepfakes, Trust & Selling Video To The Mainstream An interview with Andrew Mok, CMO at HeyGen. 🧞 👋 Howdy to the 2,698 new legends who joined since our last edition You are now part of a 516,154-strong tribe outperforming the competition together. LATEST POSTS 📚 If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions. 🗝️ Marketing Has Too Many Humans In The Loop https://www.opensourceceo.com/p/doug-tallmadge-interview . An interview with Doug Tallmadge, Co-Founder & CEO at Gradial. 🛡️ The Agentic CRM For AI‐Native Companies https://www.opensourceceo.com/p/keith-peiris-interview . An interview with Keith Peiris, Co-Founder & CEO at Lightfield. 📡 The Last Industry Software Hasn't Eaten https://www.opensourceceo.com/p/hermann-frank-interview . An interview with Hermann Frank, Co-Founder & CEO at Gigs. 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Now, onto today’s interview INTERVIEW 🎙️ Deepfakes, Trust & Selling Video To The Mainstream Andrew Mok https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmok8/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream is the CMO at HeyGen https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream , the AI video generation platform https://www.heygen.com/tool/ai-video-generator?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream that recently surpassed $200M in ARR https://www.heygen.com/blog/heygen-surpasses-200m-arr?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream , turned profitable by Q2 2023, and has since racked up more than 31 million signups. HeyGen raised $60M in a Series A led by Benchmark at a $500M+ valuation and was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in 2026. Before HeyGen, Andrew spent over a decade at Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace, joining as one of the earliest employees in 2012 and becoming CMO at 29. Under his watch, Turo grew from 54,000 users in two cities to over seven million users across 10,000 cities, with revenue growing more than 250x. Andrew. Here's what I find interesting about Andrew. He's a self-described left-brained person who never planned to end up in marketing. He came up through analytics and growth, and it shows in how he thinks about the role. At HeyGen, he's wrestling with a problem that most AI companies wave their hands at: the vast majority of people still can't make video, and the AI companies supposedly fixing that have spent more energy going viral with deepfake stunts than actually building trust. He's also the guy building HeyGen's marketing strategy around Aristotle's principles of persuasion, which sounds like a stretch until you hear him explain why a 2,300-year-old rhetorical framework maps almost perfectly onto a modern demand generation funnel. It kind of does. What problem does HeyGen solve? We're a platform that allows people to turn their ideas and their expertise into videos https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream very easily. We live in a video-dominated world. The vast majority of our traffic and user engagement is on video content. Source: | Yet, the vast majority of people are actually locked out of video production and the content game, either because it's too expensive, they don't have the video editing and production skills, or they don't like how they look and sound on camera. All these people are locked out of this format, which is the predominant way for people to communicate and tell stories with one another. Our platform exists to solve that problem. | Who is your ICP today? Right now, we're seeing that our target audience is actually solo and small business operators. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because these are the types of people who don't have huge budgets. They don't have huge marketing teams, can't hire a big video production agency or a big video team, but they want to get in on the content game. They want to be able to build their brand, sell their business, and share their stories and expertise with the world via social media. | I actually do 3-5 customer interviews every week, and it's pretty remarkable that the people I chat with are really not what you would expect. It's a lot of people who are either starting their own business or already running their own business. Real estate agents, travel agencies, a gentleman who's helping his wife sell custom jewelry that she makes. It's people who have been watching social media and all this video content grow very rapidly, and they've essentially just been sitting on the sidelines because they don't know how to do it themselves or they can't afford it. HeyGen is the entryway that allows them to do that. Source: HeyGen https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream . What does video as a medium look like right now? We've defined our core customer problem as ‘ we live in a video-first world https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream ’. Video accounts for 82% of all consumer internet traffic. The average person consumes 17 hours of video content per week. YouTube, obviously the main format for video, sees one billion hours of video watched daily, which is insane. And then there’s social engagement. Social posts with video see up to 10x more engagement. I think we also know from reading about algorithm updates on X and LinkedIn that posts with videos get surfaced more in the algorithm, and they get more engagement. The trend is really only accelerating in that direction, not slowing down, at least not yet. Was there friction getting into a category like AI video? With all new technology, there is built-in skepticism, especially at the beginning. But with AI, it's probably a hundred times more than any other technology curve, and it's very understandable. People are very scared and hesitant about the technology. A lot of the other cinematic AI video models haven't really done the industry justice because the things that have gone viral are like Will Smith eating pasta or a deepfake of Brad Pitt doing whatever. Those types of things really erode credibility because they make it seem like this is a tool that's not practical it's used essentially just for fun or for social media viral clips and not safe. Brad Pitt or Will Smith can get a fake video made of them. It just showcases the worst of what this technology can be used for. Source: HeyGen https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream . That's been a real problem for us, rebuilding trust with everybody to show that HeyGen does not operate in that territory. We have t he most robust trust, safety, and verification https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream process. We do not allow deepfakes. We go through rigorous detection, both automated and manual reviews, to make sure that the identity and the avatar you're creating is actually you and not somebody else. We censor for profanity, sexual content, suggestive content, political content, things like that. It takes a lot of education because people just bucket us as ‘AI video’ and assume all these nefarious things are happening or that we have no guardrails. We have to educate and show them that we're trying to build this the right way with guardrails and safety in mind. It's a bit of an uphill battle given everybody's built-in predisposition. How’s the infrastructure of HeyGen? The foundation of our entire platform is our proprietary avatar model, which is developed in-house. We have our own best-in-class AI research team. Generally, in the industry, it's recognized as the best, fastest, and cheapest. If you go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask what the best AI avatar model is and who's best at creating AI avatar videos, nine times out of ten the LLM will say it's HeyGen. We're known for having the best model https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream in the industry. That underpins everything. On top of that, we build a whole bunch of bells and whistles. There's a very comprehensive UI. We have a web app as well as iOS and Android apps. We also integrate with other models if you want to use them. For example, we integrate with Seedance, which is the leading cinematic video model right now. If you want a really exciting intro or outro, or you want some cinematic camera movement in between shots, you can use Seedance to fill that in, and our user interface stitches everything together. HeyGen’d Andrew. | We also recently launched something really interesting called ‘HyperFrames’. It's an open-source motion graphics engine. Right now, it actually lives outside of the HeyGen product, so it's this free open-source thing we've built for the community, and a lot of people have built workflows into it. But obviously, the long-term plan is to integrate that back into the core product. You'll get this amazing motion graphics engine, the avatar video; you could combine it with other cinematic video models, and then we become the best place for you to stitch, end to end, these videos with the highest quality and the best experience. What does a typical week look like for you as CMO? I'll start by saying that working at HeyGen is unlike any other company I've ever worked at. At prior companies, I could answer that question very well to a T, but that's not what it's like here, and I think a lot of people working in AI companies would say the same. It's not that there's no routine and there's no process, but things are moving and changing so quickly that you have to be ready to adapt at any moment. Source: HeyGen https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream . The number one thing I try to build around on a week-to-week basis is being grounded in the customer. I mentioned I talk to three to five customers a week. Most of those are onboarding calls where I'm learning about them but also actually helping them solve issues with the product. A lot of ideas and action items typically come out of those, whether it's revisiting our audience strategy, thinking about a marketing campaign, a new channel we should test, or working with the product team to share feedback about something a user surfaced. That core workstream spins off a lot of additional workstreams that can take up a lot of the week. On the marketing-driven side, I focus on demand generation: things we're doing to build the brand, build awareness, build engagement, and build brand affinity. And then demand capture: performance marketing, growth marketing, converting attention and eyeballs into signups and subscriptions. There are lots of activities underneath each of those, and there's a lot of day-to-day, week-to-week work executing on all of it. What is working right now for HeyGen? Most of HeyGen's growth to date has been driven by launching cool and interesting new capabilities https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream or products. The marketing team's job is to amplify those launches and amplify those capabilities, and then people come because the technology is really exciting. There's this insatiable appetite from a large group of people to get ahead of the curve, learn about new technologies, and figure out how to integrate them into their workflow. That has powered a lot of HeyGen's growth to date. As we look ahead to building a long-lasting, durable business, there's actually a lot more we need to do to educate and convince the mainstream user who is not actively looking for AI tools to try HeyGen and give us a shot. A lot of what it takes to do that goes back to building trust in AI video https://www.heygen.com/tool/ai-video-generator?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream as a category and in HeyGen specifically. What I think about when it comes to building trust is that I've read and heard about a lot of marketing frameworks, and the one I always go back to is the one from thousands of years ago, stated by Aristotle on the core principles of persuasion. ‘Ethos, pathos, and logos.’ Appeal to the heart, appeal to the mind, and build up the credibility of the speaker. I think a lot about organizing our marketing streams along those lines: building heart, appealing with logic, and building up the credibility of the company and our stewards. What does the amplification of a product launch look like? For the most part, it's a social media-first launch, and we're a video company, so the core centerpiece is a great video https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream . With the video, we try to strike the right balance between marketing sizzle and practical utility, which I think is actually a bit of a different strategy than a lot of other companies. A lot of AI company product launches that I see tend to really over-index on one or the other. It's all sizzle, crazy flash, colors, all these characters, but when you go to the actual product, it couldn't be further from the truth. Or it's all the way on the other end of the spectrum: very practical, a step-by-step walkthrough, but kind of boring and not capturing people's imagination. We really try to strike a balance and get the best of both worlds. Beyond that, we post on our handles on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, where we have big followings. We also work with creators to make their own content using our tools. For example, when we launched the latest version of our avatar model, Avatar 5, we posted on our channels and also worked with notable creators, giving them early access to the feature so they could create avatar videos with their own likeness and share them with their followers. That's a big part of our playbook. What does your team look like? HeyGen is unlike any other company I've worked at before. At old companies, you'd think about building it with your C-suite people, your VPs who own specific domains, their directors, their ICs, and so on. We are purposefully building a very flat structure where there aren't all these layers of management and where everybody is expected to be a contributor. Everybody's an IC, including myself. I would estimate I probably spend about half of my time or more on what would have previously been considered IC work. Obviously, a lot of it now is with agents and working with agents through the IC work, so I can be a lot more effective than I was in the past. | The majority of the team actually just reports directly to me, and it's been working really well. It allows me to be a lot closer to the work, and I think it allows each team member to get the coaching and guidance they need to do their best work. I still do one-on-ones, but I do them shorter and more frequently. I used to do one per week with each team member. Now I do one to two 30-minute sessions per week per person, and sometimes we skip it if there's nothing to cover or we can just handle it async. How are you using AI agents day-to-day in your work? We have an agent that lives in Slack. We developed a forked version of OpenClaw so that it's safer and more secure, and our security team has been the pioneer in setting it up. It basically exists as another team member in Slack. We have a bunch of these agents on Slack, and if you look at our Slack instance, it's kind of equal parts conversations from real people and equal parts conversations from AI agents, and everybody's interacting. It's pretty amazing, actually. The one dedicated to the marketing team is called Mara. She does a lot. I found that as a leader and an executive, you spend a lot of your time doing updates and readouts because it's important to give everybody visibility and connect the dots. I have workflows set up with our agent to do all of that for me, and I just review it. | Source: | On a weekly basis, it generates this long report. We put it into our internal knowledge management system, where it creates a little web app. Of course, I use HeyGen, so I generate a talking video of myself. It's 90 seconds, with me explaining what happened, our current priorities and key insights, and it includes motion graphics and visuals https://www.heygen.com/?utm source=www.opensourceceo.com&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=deepfakes-trust-selling-video-to-the-mainstream . It generates all of this based on input that other team members put together. They also generate it with agents. It essentially creates this whole cascading workflow. The great thing about it is that it becomes this knowledge base that keeps track of everything happening within the company and the team. If I ever forget something, or the document doesn't have enough detail, and I want to ask, "What was John working on last week?" or "John mentioned something about podcasts, what did he say and what were the numbers?", I can just have a conversation with our agent, and it usually gives me the right answer. I almost think of it as this brain that knows everything. There's no bottleneck anymore in terms of information flow because the agent is all-knowing and connected to everything. You should be able to have context about pretty much everything going on just by having a conversation with the agent. How do you get the best out of yourself? For me, it all starts with having a really great morning routine and getting your day off to a running start. I used to do this thing where I would just wake up and immediately get to work, and I would find that it just tires you out over time. I would save anything personal or family-related for later in the day when you had no energy, and you just don't feel that great about yourself. So I actually wake up early now, and that's when I do the me-time stuff. That's when I exercise, I spend time with my three-year-old daughter and make her breakfast before dropping her off at school every day. By the time I've started my workday, I'm ready to commit the rest of the day. | I feel great because I've done all the personal stuff, and I feel like I've been able to enjoy my daughter. I feel very ready to commit myself to work. And at work, it's really very simple. I just feel so incredibly intellectually curious about everything that we're doing that it doesn't necessarily feel like I'm just looking forward to the next meeting or counting down the hours. It's actually just fun and interesting. Especially right now with everything going on in AI, I actually feel very lucky. It's like I'm getting paid to play with all these tools and learn about all this stuff that I would have done on my own anyway. I feel very energized by the intellectual curiosity I have about everything that's going on. Extra reading BRAIN FOOD 🧠 TOOLS WE RECOMMEND 🛠️ Every week, we highlight tools we like and those we actually use inside our business and give them an honest review. 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