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Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

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Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#11

We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…

Loving what you’re doing here - excited to show this to my non-native speaker SO and give the AI assessments a test drive.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#12

Hi - we’re Alex, Thiago, and Marcel, founders of Plug ( https://www.plugpagamentos.com/ ). We are live in Brazil, and currently onboarding our first beta customers in the US and LatAm. Plug is an API to manage multiple payments providers. Through a single integration, businesses can connect to multiple providers and route transactions between them. It’s hard to know who the right payments provider for your business i…

I've got a couple of questions: Do you plan on developing a no-code interface soon? Before learning to code, Stripe on my own landing page was a no-go. Do you help in completing the integration after your own or should I do a proper Stripe integration after Plug?

Congrats on the launch anyway, I'm convinced that your solution makes sense for early stage company. You'll have to provide more value in the future to keep enterprises in the long run I guess.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#13

I'm Bruno, founder of Abstra ( https://abstra.app/ ). Abstra is a no-code tool that allows designers to build web apps. Imagine Figma, but we export a functional web application. Here's a timelapsed demo showing it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fObVcHcd_w . As opposed to most famous no-code tools, we don't do any nested-based editing (e.g. tree structure like Webflow - which is an amazing tool, but is b…

I’ve been dying for an AutoLayout for web — can’t wait to try it.

Just curious - at what point does someone “grow out” of this tool? When you say Abstra is great for MVPs in production, I assume there’s a next level not served by this tool?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#14

Hi - we’re Alex, Thiago, and Marcel, founders of Plug ( https://www.plugpagamentos.com/ ). We are live in Brazil, and currently onboarding our first beta customers in the US and LatAm. Plug is an API to manage multiple payments providers. Through a single integration, businesses can connect to multiple providers and route transactions between them. It’s hard to know who the right payments provider for your business i…

Could you give us a high level breakdown of your KYC/AML compliance?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#15

We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…

How do you decide what the 'standard American accent' is?

I spent some time on a remote team working with a great group of folks from the US South. I'm Canadian. I picked up a lot of accent changes that stick with me today ("y'all" is the best plural second-person pronoun ever).

But even things like California vs New York, there are differences. Urban vs rural. Minnesota vs Florida.

There are interesting implications in how you make those choices. ie: "Well, however I speak is correct" will get you elitism accusations I'm sure.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#16

I'm Bruno, founder of Abstra ( https://abstra.app/ ). Abstra is a no-code tool that allows designers to build web apps. Imagine Figma, but we export a functional web application. Here's a timelapsed demo showing it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fObVcHcd_w . As opposed to most famous no-code tools, we don't do any nested-based editing (e.g. tree structure like Webflow - which is an amazing tool, but is b…

I’ve been dying for an AutoLayout for web — can’t wait to try it. Just curious - at what point does someone “grow out” of this tool? When you say Abstra is great for MVPs in production, I assume there’s a next level not served by this tool?

Great, thank you!

The next level is "complex apps" because code is still a better way to create customized abstractions.

That said, you can scale simple/CRUD applications with Abstra for tons of users without having to mind about infrastructure

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#17

We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…

Loving what you’re doing here - excited to show this to my non-native speaker SO and give the AI assessments a test drive.

Thanks! Which language is your SO's native language?

Feel free to send any good (or bad) feedback to founders@boldvoice.com!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#18
post #15

We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…

How do you decide what the 'standard American accent' is? I spent some time on a remote team working with a great group of folks from the US South. I'm Canadian. I picked up a lot of accent changes that stick with me today ("y'all" is the best plural second-person pronoun ever). But even things like California vs New York, there are differences. Urban vs rural. Minnesota vs Florida. There are interesting implications…

We can go down a very deep rabbit hole with this question, because you're absolutely right there isn't just one accent spoken in America.

But for what it's worth the term is defined as the "umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans and widely perceived, among Americans, as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics". You can read about that more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English

If you do have the chance to jump into the app and watch some of the videos that our speech coaches, Ron and Eliza, have produced, you may notice they also refer to their own accents as "this accent" as a nod to the fact that ultimately what they are able to teach is the accent they are themselves demonstrating.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#19

We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…

Having an accent increased my chances of success in US. I had an Italian strong accent. When my English got better, people thought I was from Mexico. People were not as fascinated to the accent and lost some interest. I think the problem is not necessarily the accent, but how open people in front of you are to new accents and how confident you are with yourself being a foreigner. I'm interested on how the product will develop!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7

#20

Hi - we’re Alex, Thiago, and Marcel, founders of Plug ( https://www.plugpagamentos.com/ ). We are live in Brazil, and currently onboarding our first beta customers in the US and LatAm. Plug is an API to manage multiple payments providers. Through a single integration, businesses can connect to multiple providers and route transactions between them. It’s hard to know who the right payments provider for your business i…

I've got a couple of questions: Do you plan on developing a no-code interface soon? Before learning to code, Stripe on my own landing page was a no-go. Do you help in completing the integration after your own or should I do a proper Stripe integration after Plug? Congrats on the launch anyway, I'm convinced that your solution makes sense for early stage company. You'll have to provide more value in the future to keep…

Hi Arthur - thanks for the questions. Our checkout option is embeddable, but does require coding. We will be releasing payment links, which is essentially a landing page. Might be a good option for your use case. As for the second question, there is no need to complete the Stripe integration after integrating Plug. Once you've integrated our API, you are able to use any payment provider we have integrated. Enterprise companies see a lot of value in the platform actually! It allows them to have their own, provider-agnostic vault, and the increase in acceptance rates through retries and routing significantly impacts their topline. But completely agree that we consistently need to provide more value for all clientes...independent of size :)
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