Name: The Role of Rebelliousness in Innovation — with Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T18:21:17.000Z
Duration: 41 min 33 s
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We all have to make big decisions in our lives.

Decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys.

If you reflect on them, some are good and some I'm sure you definitely regret.

In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices and they all had to make decisions and choices to get where they are today.

In this podcast, I hear about those decisions, as well as the moments of doubt, risk and conviction that impacted our guests journeys and the people they lead.

This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

In this episode, I speak to Victor Rippabelli.

I grew up with all these interests that was kind of outside of the beaten path.

I hate when people tell me what to do, like learning something because I'm told to learn something.

Victor is the Vis video content platform, Synthesia.

It's one of the UK's most valuable generative AI startups.

We went out and said to people, look, in 10 years you can make a Hollywood film on a laptop with just your imagination.

After a semester abroad at Stanford University, a life back in Denmark just didn't sit right with the Scandinavian native.

It's an amazing place, but it's really not a place that inspires ambition and drive and innovation.

These are Victor Rippabelli's executive decisions.

One of the key purposes of this podcast is to work out how people become what they are, how they become the entrepreneur, the founder, the leader that they are as well.

From a very early age, how did you see yourself in the world?

I think when you're a kid, right, like you're, you're a kid.

I think I always felt different in some ways and that I had interests that, that I felt like my peers maybe didn't have.

There's like a very kind of, sort of interesting thing, which is that when I was a kid, I was almost like half deaf, so I had like a bunch of my eardrum got replaced like three or four times, things like that.

And when you can't hear very well, what tends to happen to kids, right, is that you become sort of more in your own world.

I was reading a lot of books and doing a lot of things in kind of my own time.

I always had lots of friends and I wasn't like the weird kid in the corner just on my computer, but

I just always Think I had like, a very rich inner world from a very young age.

And I think this is probably in huge part to just the amount of reading I would do.

I would read a book a day almost when I was very, very young and just immerse myself in all these kind of fantastical worlds, especially when I was a kid, right.

And I think when I discover computers, the Internet, the local library, all of a sudden the kind of world of knowledge just expanded very rapidly.

I've always been much more interested in sort of weird fringe ideas.

I think in my later life, I think if I have to sort of look back, I think that's probably always been one of my strengths, that I know a lot of things about a lot of things.

And sometimes it's the knowledge that in theory would not be very valuable that ends up in connection with a bunch of other things you've also learned in your life that become really valuable.

So I think, I think my understanding of culture and trends was probably one of the first things I noticed when I was young.

I was very good at predicting what music would be popular, what clothing would be popular.

Never much as someone who is part of it, but

most an observer of what's happening around me, I think, later on in life.

I think that translated well into business, where I'm not an AI researcher.

We're not successful because I sat at some point, great university and came up with a new technology and commercialized it.

That's not me, that's my teammates, my co founders, my colleagues who are excellent at that.

But I think I am uniquely good at, is kind of looking around corners and seeing trends.

And that's driven really just by a very deep curiosity for the world.

I think you've mentioned a lot of fascinating things that you felt that your problem with your hearing at an early age made you more resilient in many ways.

Because you say that you read a lot, but you weren't the outsider.

So you, you were part of a big group and, and

you felt part of society, part of your school class, or you felt aloof from it?

Yeah, I've never felt like, contradiction.

But I think I've always just had this, like, side of me that, that I never really shared with much other than, like, a few friends.

And actually I would Say almost to this day is, I would say, almost still the case.

I have very deep friendships with people around very specific things.

You know, some of my best friends will be all about music, and

But I think most people who met me in my teenage years and kind of before Synthesia would probably not like, notice these things around me.

He likes to go out, likes to have fun, and does what most other normal kids do.

But as everyone, of course, I think we have our own interests and curiosities.

I think I just never in Denmark really felt like there was that many people to share it with.

Because I think it's a lovely place, but it's a small place, right.

And I think people tend to believe what others around them believe and maybe not really challenge themselves as much because of their thinking.

And I just found early on that getting into heated discussions around these things just didn't feel very productive because it didn't feel like it was like a high quality discussion.

Who were the people who supported you most?

I'd say it's definitely family and friends.

So I have two amazing parents that have always let me pursue my interest and been supportive of that, both in my early life, but

And actually my dad was at some point in my teenage years when I was very confused about what I should do with my life.

And he's like, well, you've always been really good at computers.

And when he said that, it was like the most obvious thing.

But for some reason, I never really, like, put, you know, two and two together.

What did you think you had to do before your father gave you that epiphany?

Well, I was kind of lost a little bit in my teenage years.

I'm very rebellious to the point where it can become sometimes probably a net negative.

But I'm very rebellious and I really dislike a teacher telling me that I have to learn something just because there's one of my early teachers who said Victor is.

I think you said he's very smart and he's very deeply interested just rarely in what the rest of the class is doing.