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Some years feel loud. Others feel quietly decisive. This one landed firmly in the second camp.
Over the past twelve months, tl;dv changed in ways that do not always show up from the outside.
The product got sharper, the company got sturdier, and a lot of work that had been building under the surface started to show up in the small daily moments that decide whether something is actually reliable. There were major releases, serious compliance milestones, fixes that removed friction, experiments that surprised us, and a few cultural incidents that will probably outlive the roadmap.
This is not a full account of the year. It is the version we will remember. 🙂
1. We put the whole team in Türkiye and found out who we actually are
At some point, every remote company has to answer an uncomfortable question. Does the team that exists online still work when everyone is in the same place. This year, tl;dv tested that in Türkiye.
There were no agendas, no workshops disguised as fun, and no activities designed to manufacture bonding. People who had only known each other through screens shared tables, meals, and conversations that wandered without needing to land anywhere useful. Everything slowed down, which turned out to be exactly what was needed.
Tom lost his suitcase immediately. This became a shared narrative arc until it reappeared, instantly promoted from inconvenience to triumph.
One Australian content creator, who absolutely should have known better, acquired a spectacular sunburn after spending far too long in a canoe with a founder but without sunscreen.
Evenings developed their own logic. Card games appeared and were enforced with total confidence by our resident Portuguese punk, despite the rules shifting mid-round and a couple of times where fingers were ALMOST broken.
A lie detector showed up and accused almost everyone of lying, regardless of facts.
Beach clubs and fireworks also happened… and are best never spoken about again…
Some things became obvious very quickly. Time together without a schedule changed how people worked with each other afterwards in ways no off-site agenda ever could. On a more personal level, I learned that plug sockets outside the UK remain deeply untrustworthy, but there is always someone there who will plug it in for me if I ask nicely.
Everyone went home tired, slightly sunburned in at least one case, and with a much better sense of the people they were building with. That understanding does not show up in plans or metrics, but it quietly changes everything that comes after.
2. AI continued to move fast and we moved with it, responsibly
tl;dv has always been an AI product. This year was about what happened when the rest of the world finally caught up and started expecting more.
As capabilities advanced rapidly, the margin for error shrank. People paid closer attention to nuance, to how much context the system actually understands, and to whether the output could be trusted without second-guessing it. For a product built around meetings, that meant reexamining how intelligence is applied, how results are generated, and how much control users have along the way.
We focused on making the AI feel grounded rather than impressive. Multi-meeting intelligence became practical. Ask tl;dv AI launched and became more useful across roles because it got sharper and more reliable. Transcription quality improved across languages, which lifted everything built on top of it.
As expectations rose, the goal stayed the same. Keep the intelligence trustworthy, make the product dependable, and avoid shortcuts that would trade confidence for novelty.
3. We built the controls that make AI safe to roll out at scale
As AI became more embedded in daily work, the questions around responsibility stopped being hypothetical. Who owns a recording, who can access it, how long data lives, and how consent is handled all started to matter in very practical ways.
This year, we invested heavily in the structures that sit around the product. Organization level settings became more deliberate. Admin roles and permissions were redesigned to reflect how companies actually operate rather than how tools often assume they do. Recording ownership rules were tightened, consent flows were rebuilt, and default privacy settings became more precise.
We strengthened SSO and rolled out SCIM provisioning so access could be managed cleanly as teams grew and changed. Security and compliance work moved in parallel, including SOC 2 and ongoing GDPR investment. This was about making sure tl;dv could be trusted inside companies where the cost of getting this wrong is real.
The result was a product that behaves predictably at scale. AI did not just get smarter. It became easier to govern, easier to explain internally, and easier to stand behind when tough questions came up.
4. Meetings stopped being isolated moments
For a long time, most meeting tools treated conversations as one off events. You joined, you talked, you maybe skimmed the notes later, and then everything quietly disappeared into a folder you never opened again.
This year, that started to change in a meaningful way.
Multi-meeting intelligence made it possible to look across conversations instead of treating each one like a sealed box. Patterns became visible. Decisions resurfaced when they mattered. Follow ups stopped relying on memory or optimism. Automated multi-meeting AI reports turned recurring meetings into something you could actually work with over time, whether that was daily, weekly, or monthly.
Ask tl;dv reinforced this shift. Instead of searching manually or rewatching recordings, people started asking direct questions and getting clear, relevant answers grounded in real context. The result was less digging and fewer moments of “I know we talked about this somewhere.”
Meetings did not disappear. They just became easier to carry forward, which turned out to be the more useful outcome.
5. Meetings left the laptop
The launch of the tl;dv mobile app changed a simple assumption. Meetings were no longer something that only happened behind a screen.
With the mobile app now live on iOS and Android, in person conversations finally have a place alongside Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls. Coaching sessions, workshops, quick hallway conversations that turned into decisions, all of them can live in the same workspace as everything else.
This was one of the most requested additions to the product, and delivering it felt less like a launch and more like removing an artificial boundary. Work does not separate cleanly into online and offline, and the way conversations are captured should not either.
The mobile app is intentionally focused. It does what it needs to do well, without trying to mirror every desktop feature. The result is something practical, lightweight, and genuinely useful in moments where a laptop is not present.
Once meetings were no longer tied to a desk, the shape of tl;dv expanded with them.
6. The week where everybody was “CEO”
If you follow us on LinkedIn, you probably remember this. If you do not, well, the screenshots below will help.
LinkedIn is generally a place where people behave themselves. Titles are treated seriously, announcements are written carefully, and humour tends to be deployed with restraint. Which is why this landed the way it did.
It started with Renée. She changed her title to CEO of tl;dv and announced it with total confidence. A few weeks later, the rest of us followed. Everyone updated their profile. Everyone announced it. Nobody tried to explain it properly.
Then we all did the thing you are absolutely not meant to do on LinkedIn.
We fought about it in the comments.
Not quietly. Not politely. Titles were defended. Authority was questioned. Leadership structures were debated by people who had never met and never would. We treated the comments section like a competitive sport and joined in enthusiastically. At no point did anyone attempt to calm the situation down.
A lot of people assumed this was a marketing play. It was not (although it did boost us a bit). Most of us were just having fun, and once it became clear how uncomfortable LinkedIn was with the whole thing, we leaned into that discomfort rather than smoothing it over.
The funniest part is that the consequences have outlived the joke. Even after everyone quietly changed their titles back, we are still getting invited to CEO board talks, leadership workshops, and strategy sessions. Apparently, the internet does not accept reversals.
Somewhere in the chaos, something unintentionally honest came through. In spite of growing, and in spite of being an incredibly professional team building a serious product, we have not decided to start acting stiff for the sake of appearances. We do the work properly. We just refuse to pretend we are not enjoying ourselves while we do it.
7. The outside world noticed, and then things escalated
Earlier this year, tl;dv ranked third in the Sifted 250, placing us among the fastest growing startups in Europe.
It was one of those moments that lands quietly at first and then keeps resurfacing, not because of the number itself, but because of what it reflects. A remote team, spread across time zones, building steadily and ending up somewhere very visible without chasing it too loudly.
Raphael could not attend the award ceremony, so Tom stepped in with a somewhat incorrect name badge. He did not speak German, but he did manage to collect a very nice looking award and a glass of champagne, which felt like a reasonable outcome given the circumstances.
Sifted also profiled the team behind our social presence and described tl;dv as Europe’s tech’s funniest company. That felt accurate enough to accept without debate. Humor has become one of the ways we stay connected as a remote team, and it turns out it travels further than expected.
The recognition mattered, not as a destination, but as a signal. The work had landed. People were paying attention.
8. What we are taking into next year
This year changed how tl;dv feels to work on and how it shows up in the world. Not because of one defining moment, but because enough small decisions lined up in the same direction.
The foundations are stronger than they were a year ago. The product behaves in a way people can rely on. The intelligence feels more considered, and teams can roll tl;dv out with confidence without it becoming heavy or difficult to manage.
Looking ahead, the focus stays narrow. Privacy rules will become more specific. Speaker identification will continue to improve. Trimming will feel easier. Activity inside workspaces will be clearer. Performance work will keep happening quietly so the product stays light as it grows.
If you have been part of this year with us, thank you. If you have thoughts, feedback, or strong opinions about where this should go next, we genuinely want to hear them.
Some years make noise. Others change the shape of things and reveal their impact later. This one did the latter.
