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Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

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Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#71

You’re early and this is effectively a demo but just in case this is a blind spot: “token” is an in-the-weeds LLMism that means nothing in the context of transcription. Your costs may be measured in tokens but that’s not relevant to customers. Just “A free trial” with no quantifier would be better than 1k tokens.

This is a great point and a topic I’ve been thinking about myself. As more LLM services pop up that are subject to token/consumption pricing, what is the right pricing model for consumer based consumption products like this?

Words. Just estimate how many tokens that'd be and talk in words, paragraphs, etc instead.

Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#72
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

In the past when I've been in the USA, I've legit had to put on an American accent when calling for taxis and the like! I don't even have that strong an accent, and I always try my best to enunciate correctly when talking to others shrug

I'm getting married in Scotland in December and will presumably want to be able to demo so you can bank on priority support and a hard deadline :)

Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#73
post #3

I was impressed with the Demo, ready to pay 10 and no option to sign up with email :(

Made some tradeoffs for the sake of speed — email signup will come. We want it too!

Good to hear! I very much using my google account and other third parties to sign up for accounts.

Do you have any idea of how soon? Not looking for a public commitment to hang you with, just wondering if this is one of those "we're working on it now" (so days) or one of those "it's in the backlog" (months or maybe never depending on priorities).

Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#74
This is cool! Some feedback:

- As others have said, "1000 tokens" doesn't mean anything to non-technical users and barely means anything to me. Just tell me how many words I can dictate!

- That serif-font LaTeX error rate table is also way too boring. People want something flashy: "Up to 7x fewer errors than macOS dictation" is cool, a comparison table is not.

- Similarly, ".05 Word Error Rate" has to go. Spell out what that means and use percentages.

- "Forgot a name, word, fact, or number? Just ask Aqua to fill it in for you." It would be nice to be able to turn this off, or at least have a clear indication when content that I did not say is inserted into my document. If I'm dictating, I don't usually want anything but the words I say on the page.

Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#76
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about the Firefox error! Agreed on the sentiment behind native app — we plan to get Aqua in as many places as possible asap. For product iteration, you can’t beat the speed the browser affords.

Make an Electron app that simply wraps your website! Just build in best-practices updating of the wrapper as well from day one, in case you want to ship improvements to the wrapper or start to move more things to client side processing. As a side benefit, you get real estate in people’s docks and desktops :)

Would that help with the problem of integration though? What would be absolutely killer would be to emulate a USB HID keyboard or something, which would make it usable with pretty much everything, though there are definitely some security considerations there. Or if there are higher-level APIs to hook into that could work, but I would guess those would also require native function calls.

The way Google's keyboard works on Android, but on my Linux computer (and my Android phone) would be my dream here. I'd pay $10 a month for that for sure.

Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#79
post #74

This is cool! Some feedback: - As others have said, "1000 tokens" doesn't mean anything to non-technical users and barely means anything to me. Just tell me how many words I can dictate! - That serif-font LaTeX error rate table is also way too boring. People want something flashy: "Up to 7x fewer errors than macOS dictation" is cool, a comparison table is not. - Similarly, ".05 Word Error Rate" has to go. Spell out w…

Thanks for the feedback! On the last point, you can't see it in the sandbox, but the app has a Strict mode that does what you're looking for

Re: Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor

#80
Some of my thoughts:

1. This is an amazing idea!

2. I love that it is browser-based so can work everywhere. Native app would let you integrate more tightly (such as becoming a "keyboard" on the system), but that probably means "a mac app" which doesn't do me any good on Linux. If you could keep the bulk of it in cross-platform tech and just do the small integration part with native code, I think supporting at least "the big three" is doable. I bet if you provided a good API, somebody in the open source world would even do the work for you, on Linux at least.

3. Would really prefer being able to sign up with my email, and not having to log in with a third party account.

4. Online-only access is definitely fine for now, but to stay competitive in the future I would keep an eye toward being able to run inference locally so you don't have to be online to use it. This would also be a way for you to reduce costs and offer a cheaper version. If I were you, my long-term goal would be for this to be used by everybody (though that's years down the road). Local inference does complicate monetization, but that can be figured out.

5. For me to really use this enough to pay out every month, it needs to be relatively easy for me to get the output into whatever app I'm using, whether that is Chrome, Slack, Gmail, Google Docs, Vim, Gedit, or anything else. This is undoubtedly related to item 2 above, but I figured it warranted it's own mention as there may be solutions besides browser-based vs. native.

6. You're gonna have competitors hot on your heels, if they aren't already. Google in particular with GBoard on Android could be absolutely killer. Since it is Android-only, I don't think it's a major competitor now, but if they broadened it absolutely could be.

7. Do you have an exit strategy in mind already? Would you be willing to share anything on that? (I ask because it's relevant because your product could easily become part of my standard workflow, and I'm very conservative about becoming dependent on proprietary products, especially from startups). Please do not go native-only and only release a Mac app. At a minimum, please maintain the web-based version. And please for the love of all that is holy, don't sell to/get acquired by Apple! I want and need your product, and I don't and won't switch platforms (Fedora Linux currently) to get it.

Really amazing idea and great work! It is rare that I see products that I think could actually "change the world" but this one has some potential by changing the way we interact with our computers!

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