What if language stopped being a barrier — not tomorrow, but right now? In this episode of the Scouting for Growth Podcast, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Aaron Jones, award-winning entrepreneur and co-founder of Yepic AI, to explore what happens when purpose-driven entrepreneurship collides with generative AI at scale. The result? A conversation that goes far beyond hype — and straight into impact. Aaron’s journey is anything but linear. Before AI, before startups, before awards, he was behind the camera — a cameraman and assistant vision mixer working on TV productions for Sky. Acting once tempted him, but impact won. From that moment on, every career decision became about how time is spent and whose lives are changed because of it. That mindset led him to launch an ethical fashion brand at university — not for fashion’s sake, but to fund education. Each purchase helped finance schooling in Cambodia, enabling parents to earn and children to learn. The initiative earned Aaron national recognition, including a British Empire Medal, but it also taught him a hard entrepreneurial truth: purpose alone doesn’t guarantee a scalable business. (His blunt takeaway? Never work with fashion designers if you want to make money.) What followed was a sharp pivot into technology. Aaron and his team began enabling e-commerce brands to sell more by building an “intelligence web” powered by visual search — letting consumers upload images to show what they wanted to buy. The technology evolved into an API business, serving global brands like Yves Saint Laurent. Yet timing, regulation, and ownership of IP mattered. When GDPR reshaped data sharing, the opportunity to exit had passed — a painful but defining lesson in knowing when to sell. That experience set the stage for Aaron’s next chapter. Through work with Founders Factory, he became immersed in early generative AI research, experimenting with image generation long before the term became mainstream. While the technology was groundbreaking, it wasn’t commercially viable for most businesses — yet. So Aaron went where the real unmet need was emerging: video. That’s how Yepic AI was born. Yepic’s flagship product, vidvoice.ai, delivers real-time video translation with lip-syncing that actually matches the speaker — think Star Trek-level communication, now available in business meetings, telehealth, live events, and film dubbing. It’s already being used via Zoom, making it the first solution of its kind to operate seamlessly in live environments. In a world flooded with generative AI tools, Aaron is refreshingly honest about the challenge ahead: when the hype fades, businesses don’t buy “cool” — they buy outcomes. Generating images or content isn’t enough. Leaders must prove measurable impact, whether that’s revenue, engagement, or operational efficiency. This episode is essential listening for: Executives evaluating real-world AI adoption Founders navigating pivots, exits, and timing Investors separating signal from noise in generative AI Leaders asking how technology can scale both impact and value The creative possibilities of AI are finally visible to the world. But as Aaron makes clear, the winners won’t be those who create the most — they’ll be the ones who create what truly matters.