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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

#91

Post by ilyausorov »

t0rt01se wrote: post #71
anadalakra wrote: post #3

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…

Can you please do the Kiwi accent instead?

Thanks for the suggestion! We'd love to explore how we can best create curriculums for other accents of English, such as British, Kiwi, Aussie, etc. But, as you can imagine, something like this takes a lot of time & planning, so we're being careful not to over extend ourselves.

Interestingly enough, if you do engage with the content in BoldVoice, you will learn the physical skills that help you understand how different sounds are made and how to use your articulators. Once you are fairly confident in these new skills, you may even be able to apply them to quickly learning all kinds of new accents.

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

#92

Post by ilyausorov »

presentation wrote: post #38
ilyausorov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Which language is your SO's native language? Feel free to send any good (or bad) feedback to founders@boldvoice.com!

Japanese :) first gotta pitch her on it though lol.

We're excited to help and be on standby :) Feel free to mention that BoldVoice is made by non-native English speakers for non-native English speakers.

Our dialect coach Eliza Simpson also recorded an introductory video that lays out the values & mission very well (2:58 mins): https://vimeo.com/572809215

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

#93

Post by yorwba »

anadalakra wrote: post #3

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…

Have you considered adapting your app for deaf people?

A friend of mine developed a pronunciation practice app for deaf speakers of Korean as a student, which won them an innovation award. But according to my friend, the pronunciation score (which was based on comparing spectrograms or something) didn't work all that well, and the award was mostly due to the non-technical team members making up a heart-warming story to promote their project.

I assume your feedback system is more advanced (can you share some details on how you determine what recommendations to make?) and would also work for deaf speakers. But you can't really assume familiarity with another spoken language, so you'd probably need explanations specifically tailored to deaf people.

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

#94

Post by brunovcosta »

nirali35 wrote: post #70
brunovcosta wrote: post #6

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…

This looks amazing! Curious to know what stack you are using to build the frontend. I am starting to build a video editor, so just curious if any framework (React, Vue) or library were especially useful?

Thank you! We are using Vue+Typescript for the frontend and Haskell & Node for the backend microservices.

For your case (and maybe for us in the future), I would take a look at rust+webasm or using WebGL directly

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

#95

Post by brunovcosta »

villasv wrote: post #43
brunovcosta wrote: post #6

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…

> Then I realized that those abstractions (elastic springs) are easier to understand than the flexbox/grid/box model for UI layout. I think so too! I enjoyed using Bootstrap precisely because my mind treated those auto-layout 12 columns as equally elastic springs, but this abstraction leaked very frequently. Really cool to see such notion embedded into a layout builder.

Thank you! I think there always an abstraction bias that makes webdev frameworks so coupled with HTML.

Great to hear that you liked!

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

#96

Post by brunovcosta »

adrirb wrote: post #53
brunovcosta wrote: post #6

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…

Wow it looks very easy to use

Thank you!

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

#97

Post by dhoe »

anadalakra wrote: post #3

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…

I tried to build something like this a couple of years ago, just by using speech-to-text, and that worked really badly (but it was better than nothing). I've given BoldVoice a spin and am very impressed by how well it works on phoneme level - well done, congrats on launching!

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

#98

Post by bredren »

bl557 wrote: post #67
eldaisfish wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree fundamentally with the premise here. An accent is simply someone applying the rules of pronunciation from one language to another. No accent is right or wrong but your product seems to imply that North American accents are desirable or correct while accents rooted in non-english languages are less desirable. Instead of trying to "acquire an accent" why not focus on clarity of speech and pronunciation? If s…

Unfortunately some people do think differently of you based on your accent, subconsciously or consciously

Not to stir the pot but: Wasn’t this controversially brought up as a signal among startup founders by PG?

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

#99

Post by kriro »

anadalakra wrote: post #3

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…

I have very mixed feelings on this.

First of all, it feels like a patch for latent discrimination. I'd rather strive towards a world where accents matter less than fixing accents. Sure very thick accents can hinder communication but I feel like improving that a bit is enough. There's no need to perfectly emulate the native accent (and let's not forget about the differences between say Jersey, Oklahoma, Boston and L.A.).

Secondly, I'm not sure an app is really needed for this. Someone dedicated enough to install an app for this might also be dedicated enough to turn on Netflix and just speak along until they sound similar to the actors.

Either way, good luck to the team.

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

#100

Post by ilyausorov »

askhan wrote: post #52
anadalakra wrote: post #3

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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NriDTxseog BoldVoice, I hope you get Amy Walker on as a consultant...!

Thanks for sharing!
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