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A decade ago, we set out on a journey to change how the world thinks about transcription. What began as a solution for journalists has grown into a transformative platform that serves media enterprises and organizations across industries worldwide. Now a global company with more than 80 employees based in the UK and Canada, Trint continues to push the limits of what's possible with transcription.
As we celebrate our tenth birthday, join us as we look back on a decade of innovation, talent, challenges and growth. Here’s to the journey so far – and the exciting road ahead.
Trint’s story starts with Jeff Kofman, an Emmy-award-winning journalist with three decades of experience under his belt. From covering the Libyan Revolution to being the first correspondent on the scene of the Chilean miners' rescue, Jeff built his career on capturing quotes and interviews. But the transcription process? That was always a pain.
"When you're a reporter, the spine of your stories is your interviews, speeches and news conferences," Jeff says. "I became very good at transcribing because that's what you have to do. You can't write a story if you don't have precise quotes.
"A decade ago, I saw an opportunity to leverage emerging AI speech-to-text to transform that workflow."
And so, in 2014, in an Airbnb in Florence, Jeff and three developers sketched out their vision for what would become Trint.
"None of us really knew what we were doing," Jeff says. "But there was a core understanding that there was a problem that could be solved through technology. And that's really what started it."
From that humble beginning, Trint soon took flight. Jeff brought in a talented team to refine the product and scale the company.
John St. Leger, who joined as Software Engineer in 2017, reflects on how the team has progressed since the early days. “There's very few features I haven't worked on at Trint and I'm quite proud of what we've achieved. The landscape and AI space in general is constantly changing. But as new people join, they also bring a kind of new perspective and the company is completely different to what it was seven years ago.”
For Jeff, the vision for Trint has always been clear. "Every innovation-based company should start with a vision. It should solve a problem or a series of connected problems. And Trint very much does that," he says. "It solved the problem of finding moments that matter efficiently and effectively to expedite content creation."
It didn’t take long for Trint's team to realize that transcription was just the beginning. Listening to feedback from our users, we introduced new features to tackle a range of other challenges.
"As we built the foundational product, people [would say], could it do this?" says Jeff. "And so we added translation. Then across-Trint search functionality. Then multiple languages."
We raised the bar even higher in 2024 with the launch of multilingual live transcription, a first-of-its-kind product that can transcribe in real-time in over 40 languages.
"[It's] one of the most exciting innovations I've seen here," says Lisa Lavrishcheva, Associate Product Manager. "And it's something our customers really get value from."
Responding to the needs of the customer is at the heart of everything we do at Trint.
“We’ve taken customer feedback and really refined workflows," says Senior Product Designer Bart Cattlin-Weaver. "It's been really fulfilling to see how we've managed to iron out a lot of those issues and rectified problems to make our users' workflows seamless. It’s a thrill to see how far we’ve come.”
Over the past ten years, we're proud to have won some of the biggest names in journalism and content creation as our customers, from newspapers to TV networks.
For Ronald Mawad, Global Director of Customer Success, working with these enterprise customers has been a highlight of his role. "[It] has given me the opportunity to speak to some of the biggest and most talented content creators on our planet.
"Essentially, Trint plays a huge role in the content that tens of millions of people see. And that's truly something that I'm so thankful to say that I represent with Trint."
But it’s not just our platform that has evolved. Trint has also built a culture focused on continuous improvement and teamwork. "I think it's an amazing experience to see really smart people excited, engaged," Jeff says.
"Not only do you get to work on really interesting stuff, but you also work in a fantastic culture that supports you," says Hannah Evans, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner. "You have a lot of fun and make a lot of friends along the way."
According to Chi Shan Lo, Digital Marketing Manager, Trint offers a supportive and collaborative company culture where innovation can thrive. "Everyone is striving towards the same goals," she says. "You know that there will always be people, whether that's in your team or out of your team, who are there for you."
As for Jeff, the journey from that Airbnb in Italy has been long and full of surprises — but also deeply fulfilling.
“A decade ago, if you told me I’d morph from journalist and foreign correspondent to building a tech company – I probably would have smiled in disbelief. But now, 10 years on, I couldn’t be prouder of what Trint has become,” he says.
"It's hard," Jeff admits. "But it's also more fun than I ever thought business could be. And that's because I work with a great team of people. That's the really satisfying part of the journey."
We used Trint’s Story Builder to bring the journey of our first decade to life, and it couldn't have been easier. After sitting down with our team to conduct some interviews, we transcribed the footage to get to our text-based rough cut faster. Then we exported that file and passed the precise timecodes to our video editor to make the full video with less stress. You can see the rough cut we created here.
To top it all off, we used our time-coded transcript to find and edit key quotes for this blog post. Just another way that Trint can streamline every part of your workflow.
