[HN Gopher] Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7
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Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #7
Here's the latest Meet the Batch thread for YC's S21 batch. The
previous thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156460.
For the original description see
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27877280. There are 5
startups in this thread. The initial order is random: Monto (YC
S21): Salary on Demand for Latam -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209932 Plug (YC S21) - API
for multiple payment providers -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209933 Abstra (YC S21):
Figma-like front end development for web apps -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209934 Levo (YC S21) - High
yield savings account for Mexico -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209929 BoldVoice (YC S21) -
Accent coaching app for non-native English speakers -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209930
Author : dang
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-08-17 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
| Sriverop wrote:
| Hi, we are Salvador and Max from Levo (https://www.levo.mx) a
| high yield savings account for Mexico. We aggregate the savings
| accounts of our users and negotiate significantly better interest
| rates from other banks on their behalf.
|
| 65% of Mexican savers keep their savings in their checking or
| savings accounts, yet 97% of all bank accounts are non-interest
| bearing. This is partly due to a highly concentrated banking
| market, where 7 banks hold 80% of the market.
|
| I (Salvador) walked past the CD-Pricing Desk at Mexico's biggest
| bank every morning for 5 years. In 2017 Mexico finished the year
| with the highest inflation rate in two decades and the Central
| Bank's overnight rate was 8.25%. But Mexico's biggest bank
| offered clients rates below 3.5%. This is when I realized how
| broken the system was and set myself to find a solution to this.
|
| Levo is a certificate of deposit marketplace. People who save
| money in their checking or savings account, can access CDs from
| multiple banks through our app and get up to 300% better rates.
| For example, our client Gustavo recently got a 50,000 USD
| inheritance; his bank offered him 4.5% p.a. for his savings, with
| Levo he got 6.5% p.a. with one of Levo's banking partners.
|
| We are currently running a private beta, if you are a Mexican
| resident please reach out to be part of our special group! If
| anyone has questions or comments we'd love to hear them!
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| You mentioned an example of a $50k USD inheritance getting 6.5%
| APR, is that a peso denominated account, or a dollar
| denominated account?
|
| As an expat living in Mexico as a permanent resident, a dollar
| denominated Mexican bank account that pays above inflation
| rates is very appealing.
| LevoMX wrote:
| The account is peso denominated. If your are interested we
| are happy to make you part of the private Beta.
| anizan wrote:
| This idea looks good. Finance revolves on information asymmetry
| and keeping your customer uninformed on what's best for them.
|
| What does the final step on account opening and transfer of
| funds look like for the user? Surely banks can't be that
| cooperative in providing you an api to open accounts for them.
|
| Are there any money market funds or short term debt funds in
| Mexico?
|
| I am sure you would look into adding forex cards and
| remittances in future. There are a couple of startups here in
| India which help you get better forex rates by negotiating with
| banks for pre loaded foreign currency cards, hard currency and
| TT/Swift transfers.
| LevoMX wrote:
| In terms of using the App, once we get approval from the
| regulators, users just have to download the app and do our
| onboarding process, then wire their respective funds via
| SPEI. And yes indeed, most Banks don't have APIs, however our
| onboarding process is compliant with official KYC
| requirements and that's how we will be able to operate.
| erehweb wrote:
| Very interesting. Does Mexico have anything akin to US Federal
| Deposit Insurance? Does Levo?
| LevoMX wrote:
| Yes! Its called IPAB and its part of the federal government.
| anadalakra wrote:
| 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 English speakers like us.
|
| Users start by watching 3-5 minute video lessons to learn new
| concepts from Hollywood speech coaches, like Ron Carlos, such as
| how to pronounce tricky sounds, or how to properly use
| intonation. They then spend around 10 minutes a day improving
| their accent skills by going through words, sentences, and
| conversations, with real-time feedback on their accent from the
| pronunciation assessment AI model.
|
| The user tells us what their native language is during
| onboarding, and we serve them content on the typical accent and
| speech challenges that a person from that linguistic background
| faces in English. Regarding the feedback part, the user speaks
| certain words and sentences into the app, we record it, we
| compare each sound to the "correct" sound according to our
| library, and we spit out a score and a recommendation for what
| they should change.
|
| The vast majority of language learning apps focus on grammar and
| vocabulary, not on speaking. Even when they do speaking, they
| score it broadly as "right" or "wrong" with no feedback on how
| you can improve. Learning an accent is all about muscle memory
| formed in the mouth/lips/teeth, not memorization in the brain--
| this is what most language learning apps get wrong.
|
| Practicing the physical skills required to acquire an accent is a
| lot like working out, and with consistent work come results --
| usually you can start seeing a difference within 2 weeks. Since
| launching 8 weeks ago, we've had startup founders, globally
| distributed teams, BPO firms and even middle school Spanish
| teachers pick up BoldVoice to start working on their accents and
| feel more confident in English.
|
| We'd love to hear your experiences with accents and your comments
| about BoldVoice!
| presentation wrote:
| Loving what you're doing here - excited to show this to my non-
| native speaker SO and give the AI assessments a test drive.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Thanks! Which language is your SO's native language?
|
| Feel free to send any good (or bad) feedback to
| founders@boldvoice.com!
| presentation wrote:
| Japanese :) first gotta pitch her on it though lol.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| 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
| Zababa wrote:
| That sounds like a very nice idea! I'm French and not confident
| at all in my oral English because of my pronunciation. I did a
| bit of job hunting recently, and I was afraid that the topic of
| English would come up precisely because of that.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Hey, that's exactly why we're here. Happy to have you check
| it out and let us know if this is the type of program you
| would want to keep doing & practicing. If you have any
| feedback, questions or issues, please reach out to us at
| founders@boldvoice.com!
| ggregoire wrote:
| Hey we are in the same boat, like many French people I guess!
| I'm confident speaking English but it feels so frustrating
| sometimes to not be understood by my interlocutors.
| Especially by other non native English speakers who usually
| have a hard time understanding my accent.
|
| I'm definitely going to check this product out, I always
| wanted something like it.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| We're here for you! If you have any feedback, questions or
| issues, please reach out to us at founders@boldvoice.com!
| We're constantly working on improving the app and adding
| more engaging content.
| kriro wrote:
| 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.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Hey, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
|
| When it comes to striving for a world where accents don't
| matter, we feel the same way.
|
| In fact, our dialect coach, Ron Carlos, slacked me earlier
| today: "We truly hope that one day accents won't matter, but
| until then we have folks who feel embarrassed about their
| accent which keeps them from showing up with their full
| selves. We're here to help those folks feel more confident
| with their speech."
|
| What we're trying to help users with is learning the physical
| skills that make up their account: pronunciation, speech
| rhythm, intonation, stress -- ultimately, how to speak the
| way _they_ want, with the ultimate goal of helping the user
| become more confident and clear in their speech. If the way
| they want to sound is exactly like someone from Jersey,
| Boston, L.A. or anywhere else, we 're happy to support them!
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > First of all, it feels like a patch for latent
| discrimination.
|
| Try learning a language that's not English. You're definitely
| judged on your accent, ie. your ability to properly pronounce
| words. If you want to fully assimilate to the environment you
| choose to exist in, speaking with less of an accent helps
| with being understood. Also, the 'standard' American accent
| (ie. Hollywood/West Coast accent) is understood by absolutely
| anyone; even those who are new to speaking English.
|
| Heck, even English speakers from regions such as the
| Caribbean, England, Australia, etc..., turn their accent
| 'off' in business environments to be better understood. Many
| native English speakers can't even understand creole from the
| Caribbean for example.
|
| Accents can definitely also hamper communication. I'm a
| native English speaker who's interacted with many immigrants
| so I can definitely understand almost every accent. But two
| immigrants both speaking English as their second language and
| from different parts of the world will often have trouble,
| I've seen it plenty. Even my girlfriend, who speaks English
| at quite a high level but isn't native, has a difficult time
| if I speak too quickly using local slang and pronunciation
| (and our accent barely deviates from standard American
| English).
|
| Focusing on a standard pronunciation, especially in a job or
| school environment, helps a lot.
| alexedwalvarado wrote:
| 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!
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your story! My cofounder Anada and I can
| both relate, as we're both immigrants to the US as well.
|
| Something we want to stress with this product is that we want
| BoldVoice to live up to it's name -- helping non native
| English speakers feel bolder and more comfortable when
| speaking English and be more clearly understood.
| shaheenkdr wrote:
| Pretty cool product out there ! I come from the Conversational
| AI background ! Can imagine the hard work you've done to get
| this right on the accuracy ! Looking forward to testing it out
| ! Wishing all the best !
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Thanks, appreciate it! If you have any feedback or thoughts
| to the pronunciation analysis feel free to send them to
| founders@boldvoice.com!
| eldaisfish wrote:
| 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 someone is unable to
| understand an accent, it is more often a case of that person
| not being exposed to differences in pronunciation which speaks
| more to the listener's lack of exposure than something wrong
| with the speaker.
|
| Many regional accents from the UK are difficult to understand
| because they use non standard grammar, sentence structure and
| place stress and intonation differently.
|
| I agree with the focus of most existing language learning -
| vocabulary and grammar are the foundation. Intonation and
| pronunciation are important. An accent is just top dressing -
| it is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of clear
| communication. The goal should be clear communication, not a
| north american accent.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| > The goal should be clear communication, not a north
| american accent.
|
| I agree with this 100% - mutual understanding is the basis of
| communication. Nevertheless, I don't think this the problem
| that BoldVoice is trying to solve here. While I'd love all my
| audiobooks to be read with a Glaswegian accent, North
| American one is what most people are internationally most
| familiar with. As a non-native speaker, being able to speak
| fluently with an accent that is highly desirable (at least
| within this century) carries not only practical utility but
| also social status if you consider the fact that this is
| someone's second (or nth) language.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I invite you to watch one
| of our dialect coaches, Ron Carlos, share a bit about both
| the values and process that he brings to the table at
| BoldVoice (1:43 mins) - https://vimeo.com/572809188
|
| As our name implies, we want to help non-native English
| speakers feel bolder and more confident when speaking
| English. To feel more confident, indeed, one may need to more
| deeply learn the rules of English grammar, and more varied
| vocabulary.
|
| However, in the pursuit of more confident and clear speech,
| one may also want to learn how to adapt their pronunciation,
| how they place stress, how they use intonation and they way
| they use pacing and rhythm. All of these are the component
| parts of an accent.
|
| A note from Ron (who just Slacked me while I was writing
| this): Clarity of speech and pronunciation are big parts of
| an accent. You can't change those without changing an accent.
| We are dialect coaches. We love peoples' native accents,
| which is why we use sounds and samples from each speaker's
| familiar language to teach sounds in American English. We
| want to empower our users to be able to control their speech
| so they can choose when sound more American in situations
| where it may benefit them. We truly hope that one day accents
| won't matter, but until then, we have folks who feel
| embarrassed about their accent which keeps them from showing
| up with their full selves. We're here to help those folks
| feel more confident with their speech.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| You have not addressed the fundamental point of my comment
| - why are you selling a north american accent in
| particular?
|
| Clear speech is not predicated on acquiring a certain
| accent and i feel you are feeding into the stereotype of an
| accent determining the quality of the speaker, not the
| content of speech.
|
| Edit - you ignore the fact that a native speaker of English
| may have an accent that is not North American. Think about
| millions in the Indian subcontinent or Africa. Are you not
| being subtly racist in implying that only accents from
| North America are desirable? Personally, i find many
| African accents incredibly clear and easy to understand.
|
| This is the reason for my opposition to "accent coaches" -
| they focus on the wrong thing - the accent. To anyone with
| half a brain, D Trump sounds incredibly stupid despite his
| north American accent.
| dakna wrote:
| As a fellow immigrant working in the US and as someone
| working with non native speakers from other regions in
| the world, I can assure you this is not about racism. It
| is about team cohesion, clarity, getting things done in
| an international team. People have to spend extra brain
| cycles just to tune in to how you say things, before they
| can focus on what you actually say. This is especially
| true at the beginning of working with someone who's
| accent you have never heard. There is a big difference in
| accents between someone from India, France, Ukraine.
| While there is nothing wrong with that, it has value for
| international teams to mitigate this difference and
| settle on a common standard.
| ddoolin wrote:
| I like your point about cohesion. I'm not an immigrant
| here so, perhaps obviously, I agree. I have worked on
| teams and accents of those I have to collaborate with is
| a big factor in determining overall "friction". Often if
| the accent is too strong, it really makes the interaction
| dreadful because I (and others) _want_ to understand you
| but it 's difficult and embarrassing having to ask
| "what?" three times per sentence.
|
| I don't think you need any better example than support
| call centers. How many people routinely avoid calling for
| support or simply loathe the idea of doing so because
| they're like to get someone with a heavy Indian,
| Filipino, etc. accent that leads to the scenario I
| mentioned above ("whats?")? When it comes down to it, it
| has a real cost in many ways.
| argc wrote:
| Many people learning foreign languages have a goal of
| sounding like a native speaker from a particular area.
| There is nothing wrong with that.
| dang wrote:
| Sorry for veering offtopic, but can you please stop
| posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've unfortunately
| been doing it a lot, in many threads. It degrades
| discussion and, as
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| explains, we're trying for something different than that
| here. Note this one, for example: " _Have curious
| conversation; don 't cross-examine._"
|
| The main thing that would fix this is if you edit the
| swipes out of your comments, e.g. commenting on how bad
| the other person's point is, how they are nitpicking, how
| they are failing to argue properly. If you simply make
| your substantive points directly, without negative 'you'
| statements, your comments will be much better.
|
| Also, please omit flamebait like the bit at the end of
| your comment here. It breaks the site guidelines too, and
| leads nowhere good.
| bl557 wrote:
| Unfortunately some people do think differently of you based
| on your accent, subconsciously or consciously
| bredren wrote:
| Not to stir the pot but: Wasn't this controversially
| brought up as a signal among startup founders by PG?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| The NA English accent is considered the most clear and easy
| to understand. This is not a controversial opinion and is
| held by virtually all non-native English speakers around the
| world.
|
| Frankly there are billions of people who would kill to speak
| English like a native American. It's about economics, not
| identity politics.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > Frankly there are billions of people who would kill to
| speak English like a native American
|
| Probably, at least in poor and undeveloped countries. But a
| lot of people would kill even more to speak with a posh
| British Accent, it's really hard to sound sophisticated
| when speaking American English.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| >The NA English accent is considered the most clear and
| easy to understand.
|
| Do you have any evidence of this? I would believe that it
| depends strongly on the language(s) you already know.
| Perhaps you are confusing prevalence with clarity. North
| America has tremendous soft power - more so than any other
| part of the world and their accents are ubiquitous.
|
| Clarity is not necessarily function of the accent.
| Grustaf wrote:
| American English is easier to understand because it's
| less distinctive, it has lost any character, which is
| common for linguae francae.
|
| So I don't think it's solely about American soft power,
| although that will undoubtedly play a part.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| American media (movies, news, etc.) is universal. People
| all around the world watch American shows and movies and
| are accustomed to the accent. This output dwarfs any
| other versions of English. So, to begin with, people are
| just more familiar with American English.
|
| Adding to that, I'm not confusing prevalence with
| clarity. The standard American accent is clearer and
| easier to understand than most other variants, including
| American subcultural accents like the Boston, Texan, or
| Southern accents.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| So you have no evidence of your claim.
|
| >, I'm not confusing prevalence with clarity
|
| ...but you do that right here:
|
| >American media (movies, news, etc.) is universal. People
| all around the world watch American shows and movies and
| are accustomed to the accent.
|
| So it is prevalence and not clarity.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| No, it is both, as I just said.
|
| It is widespread common knowledge that the American
| accent is the easiest to understand. If you don't agree
| with this, I'm sorry but you are not speaking from
| experience.
| Zababa wrote:
| As a French, the Amerian accent is usually the easiest to
| understand. That's also what most people around me think,
| though they also think of the British accent as more
| "fancy". This is for the "American you hear on TV"
| accent. which is also the one that I hear the most on
| Youtube or sites like that.
|
| You're right about clarity not being a function of
| accent, at least not totally. There are some people that
| speak terrible English with a French accent, and others
| that speak clear and easy to understand English with a
| French accent. The same applies to pretty much every
| accent. I also agree with you on the soft power, however
| part of the soft power will mean that people are more
| used to the NA accent.
|
| As a final point, I've heard multiple times that
| sometimes people that speak English as a second language
| can understand each other really well while Americans
| have a really hard time understanding them. If that's a
| real phenomenon, then having a non-American accent could
| be detrimental if you want to work in the USA.
| codegeek wrote:
| "The goal should be clear communication, not a north american
| accent"
|
| Yes but how do you teach clear communication without
| focussing on accent ? You ultimately have to pick a way to
| speak and accents define that way.
| quitethelogic wrote:
| This hasn't been my experience. I worked with a man years ago
| that was relatively fluent in English, but whose thick accent
| made understanding him somewhat difficult. Listening intently
| was required to understand him and he would often need to
| repeat himself, even though he was using the correct words
| and grammar. It's something he ran into pretty often at the
| time and he worked to improve it. Something like this app may
| have helped him. Slight accents may be "just top dressing,"
| but this is most definitely not always the case.
| dannyw wrote:
| Disagree with you here. For some people, accents can be a big
| personal issue. This helps solve that.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > An accent is simply someone applying the rules of
| pronunciation from one language to another.
|
| Exactly, and that is the wrong way to speak the "another"
| language. The ears of native speakers are tuned to a certain
| pronunciation, any departures from that will be harder to
| understand, it will be a distraction.
|
| You might not like it, but that's how it is.
|
| > Many regional accents from the UK are difficult to
| understand because they use non standard grammar, sentence
| structure and place stress and intonation differently.
|
| True. It's also true that many regional or working class
| accents in the UK will impair your job prospects in the UK.
| It's probably better to come with a Swiss or Norwegian accent
| than a Geordie one, when applying for a job at Goldman.
| mabbo wrote:
| 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.
| ilyausorov wrote:
| 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.
| mattzito wrote:
| Pure GAE/SAE is fairly arch and stilted - I assume you are
| chilling out on some of the more arcane aspects like liquid
| Us in "reduce" and "student" and "forehead" as "fahred"?
| Most dialect coaches default to something looser when
| teaching an american accent because SAE sounds almost
| british if you're strictly adhering to it.
| geofft wrote:
| If by "liquid U" you mean pronouncing /ju/, then no, GAE
| pronounces it "redooce" and "stoodent", not "redyooce"
| and "styoodent." From the article:
|
| > _yod-dropping after alveolar consonants (with new
| pronounced /nu/, not /nju/)_
| mattzito wrote:
| That's interesting - Speak with Distinction, which was
| treated like a bible of SAE when I was in school, leans
| on /ju/ for stressed syllables:
|
| https://books.google.com/books?id=hM-
| GDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT126&lpg=...
|
| not my area of expertise, but I had assumed from the
| article that SAE and GAE are equivalent, but maybe not?
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Hey guys, for the record, in our description we used
| "Standard American accent" as a bit of a catch-all term,
| not quite in the most technical manner.
|
| One of our dialect coaches, Ron Carlos, slacked me the
| following blurb: The accent taught in American theater
| schools (which we're calling SAE here, most would call it
| Mid-Atlantic) is an accent that was popular in Hollywood
| in the 40s. Many schools have modified it to sound more
| modern. And we definitely don't use that accent in
| BoldVoice. Ours is more modern: for example, can't and
| Cod will have two separate vowel sounds, and Tune and
| toon will sound the same.
| mattzito wrote:
| Okay, that's helpful, thanks for going right to the
| source - yes, that's what I learned in theater school
| (referred to as SAE), and found that it was useless for
| everything except Shakespeare and poetry. I thought it
| pretty unlikely that was what you were going to teach
| non-native english speakers.
| geofft wrote:
| I'm guessing that the meaning of "General American
| English" has drifted over the years - it seems like
| _Speak With Distinction_ is from 1942, when those sorts
| of pronunciations were common, and it would have been
| appropriate to teach that to non-native speakers. Now the
| accent is a little bit different, just like how
| "business casual" now includes certain types of jeans.
| askhan wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NriDTxseog
|
| BoldVoice, I hope you get Amy Walker on as a consultant...!
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Thanks for sharing!
| dhoe wrote:
| 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!
| ilyausorov wrote:
| Thanks for trying it out, glad to hear you liked the tech!
|
| We're continuing to improve and expand both the technical
| capabilities of the pronunciation assessment, as well as add
| more varied & exciting content that a user can go through.
| XFrequentist wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker, but I'd love something like this
| for French, Spanish, or Mandarin! Any good products you're
| aware of?
| kboom wrote:
| One of my coworker and good friend literally named NPCs in the
| game we were developing together at work after my pronunciation
| mistakes: kunter ( _counter_ strike), eevol, etc. In French we
| have an 'ee' sound you dont even have in english, it's much
| more 'ee' than _ee_. Took me years to hear the difference.
| Pretty sure it is one of the hardest spot for a french: beach,
| snitch, sheep, cheat, etc. And none of those sound like an _i_
| in french (e.g _frite_ ).
| usmannk wrote:
| Snitch doesn't sound like beach, sheep, cheat. I'm not sure
| how to approximate snitch in French, maybe you can't. The
| Google card that comes up if you search "snitch
| pronunciation" is right though.
| fnfilho wrote:
| Amazing product!
| t0rt01se wrote:
| Can you please do the Kiwi accent instead?
| ilyausorov wrote:
| 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.
| bithavoc wrote:
| Hi, congrats on your launch.
|
| This app would have been ideal for me; I'm now looking to
| improve my pronunciation after working on my grammar for a
| while. But I lost trust in the first 15 minutes; if you check
| lesson 1/4 of "Unvoiced and Voiced consonants," the app expects
| me to repeat the following phrase with an American accent:
|
| > This house is a part of a low-income housing project.
|
| But the coach audio clip does not say that; the coach says:
|
| > This house is part of a low-income housing project.
|
| So the audio clip of the coach features what seems to be
| correct grammar, the engine that corrects my pronunciation does
| not. If I try to say the phrase the way the app describes it,
| with "is a part", I'm able to pass the exercise. If I say the
| way the coach says it ("is part"), then it fails me.
|
| So is my perception that the app does not follow American
| grammar. It is not great to have an app that helps me improve
| my pronunciation while it screws my grammar.
|
| Also, how do I delete my account?
| [deleted]
| anadalakra wrote:
| Hey there, thanks for checking us out!
|
| The error that you pointed out has been fixed, and now the
| sentence matches the coach's sample -- feel free to double
| check this on the app. Both "part of" and "a part of" are
| grammatically correct. That said, we definitely agree that
| the coach sample should match the written sentence.
|
| By the way, potential issues such as these is exactly why we
| added the flag feature on the practice cards, through which
| you can report any errors in spelling or other types of
| issues. We strive for 100% accuracy, but there are still real
| people behind this making all the content, so we appreciate
| user input to make things always better.
|
| If you would like to delete your account, we can help. Just
| email us at support@boldvoice.com with your account details.
| yorwba wrote:
| 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.
| anadalakra wrote:
| That's an interesting use case that we could potentially
| explore down the line, thanks for sharing!
|
| Right now, we're focusing on non-native English speakers, as
| it's a problem that we personally understand best -- as well
| as a very large market.
| alabamacadabra wrote:
| Accents/linguistic aspects of neurology tend to be associated
| closely with intelligence. I think that it's likely none of
| your investors have the requisite amount required to see that
| this is non-functional. Also Americans will adapt their speech
| to be more foreign if others are using linguistic patterns that
| are domestic. This is truly a stupid undertaking.
| LukeEF wrote:
| This is a native english speaker: https://youtu.be/pit0OkNp7s8
|
| We are a diverse bunch
| ddoolin wrote:
| Wow! That was amazing, I couldn't understand more than a few
| words of the first speaker. The others were much more
| intelligible, but it required a lot of attention (which is
| also interesting, how much of listening is really passive). I
| feel for any non-native English speakers used to a different
| accent trying to understand that.
| karinaderbez wrote:
| Hi HN, we're Karina and Andres of Monto (https://www.monto.mx/).
| We give employees of our affiliated companies access to their
| earned wages 24/7. We're currently operating in Mexico.
|
| With Monto users can pay for basic services (like water,
| electricity) on time, avoiding penalties. They can stop paying
| overdraft fees and avoid having to resort to abusive credit
| alternatives like shark loans, employer loans, payday loans,
| credit cards, bank loans, department store credit cards, pawn
| shops. The conditions on these options are abusive and
| prohibitively expensive for low-income workers and have resulted
| in serious financial stress for millions of people.
|
| Andres was working in investment banking in New York, but ended
| up back in Mexico for a while working on the family business and
| advising some friends with their business. Through these
| experience he was shocked to find out: 1) The level of
| indebtedness that low-income workers had in Mexico. 2) Companies
| were not offering benefits that promoted financial wellness in
| most cases they were offering problems that exacerbated the
| problem. 3) The lack of transparent, low cost, easy-to-use
| financial products in the market. He decided to move back to
| Mexico after living abroad for 12 years, and start a company that
| would fix this for people.
|
| Users have immediate access to their earned money with Monto - we
| deposit the money in 2 minutes into any bank account. Withdrawals
| are secure and confidential. Users don't need to fill out an
| application, provide documentation or fulfill a long list of
| requirements - any employee of our affiliated companies can use
| it. Users pay a small fixed charge per withdrawal, regardless of
| the amount. There are no interest payments or hidden fees. In
| contrast to other alternatives, we don't perform credit checks
| and usage of Monto cannot affect our users in any way (e.g.
| credit score).
| IceDane wrote:
| People who are not making enough money to make ends meet -- and
| thus end up with overdraft fees or having to make use of things
| like instant loans or credit cards -- don't need to get paid
| _faster_. They need to get paid _more_.
|
| Whether they can afford to live or not is a matter of simple
| arithmetic: money left = money made - expenses. Being able to
| tap into their underwhelming income faster to cover a mid-month
| bill doesn't help them in any way, it just pushes the problem
| around, so that come payday, they will have even less and have
| to repeat the same process.
|
| This product is only less distasteful than text message money
| lenders because it doesn't come with exorbitant interest rates.
| This product isn't helping anyone. It's just capitalizing on
| the poor.
| IMTDb wrote:
| > People who are not making enough money to make ends meet
| [...] don't need to get paid faster. They need to get paid
| more.
|
| Or they need to pay _less_. If the cost of being poor
| represents a significant fraction of the total spending for
| these people, lowering that through arbitrage is still a
| benefit.
|
| I mistakenly went negative once on one of my bank accounts
| (purely due to sheer laziness/inattention), I was amazed by
| how expensive that small mistake was. People who are
| unfortunate enough to have than happen regularly spend _a
| lot_ on those fees, especially compared to their almost non-
| existent disposable income. Anything that can help /reduce
| those expenses is a win in my book.
| IceDane wrote:
| You're neglecting the fact that they will also have
| expenses the month after, and the month after that. Tapping
| into their income faster just means that this month's bill
| gets covered by their salary, but next month's bill goes on
| credit.
|
| If anything, this product is bad like credit cards and
| overdrafts, in that it will enable people to make
| financially unsound decisions while feeling like they can
| actually afford it, when they can't. They're just burning
| the candle at the other end.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| For ease of numbers, let's say you make $100/week and
| have to spend $90/week on personal expenses.
|
| If you get paid once every 2 weeks, you have: Week 1:
| -$90 Week 2: +$20 Week 3: -$70 Week 4: +$40 Week 5: -$50
| Week 6: +$60 Week 7: -$30 Week 8: +$80 Week 9: -$10 Week
| 10: +$100
|
| So it takes you 9 weeks before you never go negative and
| to be able to afford to take the job, you need $90.
|
| If you get paid everyday, it's: Week 1: +$10 Week 2: +$20
| Week 3: +$30 Week 4: +$40 Week 5: +$50 Week 6: +$60 Week
| 7: +$70 Week 8: +$80 Week 9: +$90 Week 10: +$100
|
| It's clearly nicer to get paid everyday all else being
| equal.
| IceDane wrote:
| Yes, you're absolutely right. If we set up a perfect
| example to support your arguments, and we ignore any
| possible negative aspects, then we can conclude that this
| is a purely beneficial arrangement.
|
| Look, I'm not arguing that it can't be useful to have the
| ability to get paid daily sometimes, but I don't buy into
| this schtick about this company doing this in some
| attempt to help the poor, because literally the opposite
| is happening.
|
| A more realistic picture goes something like this:
|
| In the middle of the month with only $200 in your
| account, you get hit with a $400 car repair bill. Instead
| of having overdrafts or text message money lenders, you
| can now borrow from your future salary via this company.
| You do this, cover your bill.
|
| Now it's $next_month and you just got paid $400 less. If
| you were $200 in plus in the middle of last month, it
| doesn't seem far-fetched that you'll be in a similar
| situation this month, which means you're already at
| -$200, but you just don't know it until the middle of the
| month.
|
| So what do you do now? Do you borrow from your salary
| again and repeat this process? Maybe, but then go back to
| step 1.
|
| An interesting related tidbit is the fact that poor
| people are actually more likely to make bad financial
| decisions(and health and etc) and there are numerous
| studies showing this.
|
| The only thing this product is doing is handing the poor
| yet another instrument to create financial trouble for
| themselves, under the guise of helping them. I can also
| frame it like this: How is this _any different_ than if
| this company instead just offered "no nonsense loans" at
| only a 2% interest? Hint: There is zero difference,
| except in terms of risk for the company. The genius of
| this arrangement is that they never have to worry about
| people not paying off their loans.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| I think this is a pretty extreme take and probably not fully
| warranted. I do agree that the bigger problem is enough money
| not the same money sooner.
|
| It is kind of messed up though that you put in work and then
| your employer decides to pay you 1 or 2 weeks later. As an
| employee, you're essentially giving a short term loan to your
| employer. You also carry the risk for whatever reason they
| wouldn't be able to cover payroll. Floating a week or two of
| personal expenses may not sound like a lot but if you're
| living pay check to pay check it can be a ton.
|
| Is this idea going to significantly change workers' rights
| and standing? Absolutely not. Is it poverty profiteering?
| Probably not.
| gotostatement wrote:
| > Users pay a small fixed charge per withdrawal, regardless of
| the amount.
|
| Really disappointed to read this. Wages are so low that working
| people can't pay their bills, so your solution is to lower
| their wages even more? There was another YC company like this
| but they were charging the _company_ , not the employees. You
| may not be a loan shark, but you are enabling the company to
| pay low wages and offloading the cost of mitigating the problem
| to the already-exploited. This is ethically dubious, at best
| karinaderbez wrote:
| Employers or users can pay the withdrawal fee, that's up to
| the company. We encourage companies to offer it as financial
| benefit. Regardless, users love our product and see a lot of
| value in getting the flexibility to decide when to get paid.
| In contrast to other options in the market there are no
| interest payments or hidden costs.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| To be fair to the GP, your video does say "Sin costo para
| su empresa", so that sounds like the route Monto is
| pushing.
| gotostatement wrote:
| I can see how in the short term it's a positive service -
| they can now keep their lights on, their water running,
| etc.
|
| But as a long-term proposition, a permanent adjustment to
| the status quo, it just feeds into an exploitative system
| in the same way that loan sharks do. You're filling a gap
| that should be filled with higher wages, and reducing wages
| from the most-vulnerable to do so.
| jamiequint wrote:
| You're arguing for reducing options for people who don't
| have money to ... make yourself feel better? Surely them
| having an option to choose for themselves is better than
| no option, unless you think you know better than them
| (which would be pretty arrogant and small-minded of you
| IMO).
| samstave wrote:
| I agree with your sentiments, loan-sharks gunna loan-
| shark....
|
| Though, if there is a good lining here, its not the
| retarded interest rates check-cashing and pay-day loan
| places charge... and thusthis seems a step in the right
| direction...
|
| Although, I am also reminded of MONDO.COM
|
| YOU CAN DO ANYTHING AT MONDO.COM!
|
| THats what this BSP sounded like...
|
| ----
|
| I wish them well though.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| Agree with you. If Monto only works with 'affiliated
| companies,' at least strike a deal with those companies to
| take the financial burden off of their low-wage employees.
| That other YC startup Payflow (that was actually ripping off
| UIs, to their detriment) proved it to be possible.
| alexvilhena wrote:
| 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 is. In the early stage you may care most about a fast
| integration, later you're looking for lower fees and more payment
| methods, and finally for better acceptance rates and fail-over
| options. We built Plug so companies could focus on their core
| business. With our multiple connections, provider-agnostic vault,
| and routing engine, our users always work with the best provider,
| on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Working with multiple
| providers means you can optimize costs and acceptance rates
| through routing and retries, and that you will be able to avoid
| lock-ins.
|
| Brazilian merchants in particular change their payment provider
| frequently. They do this to support multiple local payment
| methods, to try and improve the worst acceptance rate in Latin
| America (77% according to Visa), and to reduce their costs, which
| in some cases can be 10% or more of the transaction.
|
| Alex was at Braintree, Marcel was at Gympass, and Thiago was at
| Medicinae. We got the idea from seeing our best clients,
| companies like Uber, AirBnb, and iFood, build their own payment
| abstraction layers to work with different providers. We've built
| software that allows any business to do the same: one integration
| for multiple connections, and the ability to always transact with
| the best provider without having to write extra code.
|
| Rei do Pitaco has been using Plug to reduce their costs and
| support multiple payment methods through different providers.
| CartX has been using Plug to offer multiple providers to their
| client base without having to integrate each provider. Simplix
| uses our product to optimize costs by routing to the least
| expensive provider for each transaction. We're looking forward to
| hearing your comments!
| arthurcoudouy wrote:
| 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.
| alexvilhena wrote:
| 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 :)
| alexvilhena wrote:
| feel free to reach out if you have any more questions:
| a@plugpagamentos.com
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Could you give us a high level breakdown of your KYC/AML
| compliance?
| alexvilhena wrote:
| Sure! We're actually a software layer. The KYC/AML is done by
| the providers. We only help our clients ensure this is a
| smooth process by letting them know the steps beforehand and
| aggregating all the relevant information before sending
| through.
| jbpnoy6fifty wrote:
| This space is very red ocean. What makes your product unique
| than other more mature offerings?
| samstave wrote:
| Even in the USA Bodegas have a huge problem with card
| transaction fees, for example, the one near me charges $.80 per
| card transaction... So, imagine if you are buying something for
| $1.60 on your card (Many people do this, especially when you
| observe them using their unemployment/SNAP (Food
| Stamps/Government assistance cards)) -- so they pay %50 of the
| transaction just to swipe their card....
| brunovcosta wrote:
| 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 basically a visual HTML editor requiring
| almost the same skills). Instead, we have free canvas-based
| editing, so we let designers freely iterate as they do with
| prototyping tools like Figma/AdobeXD/Sketch/etc.
|
| Our visual interface builder lets you add controls using
| "springs". This is a kind of constraint layout (like
| XCode/Android studio does) without Cassowary solver (which means
| more tolerance to inconsistencies). This idea actually came from
| a master thesis project with my girlfriend where we created
| methods to simulate elastic material deformations. Then I
| realized that those abstractions (elastic springs) are easier to
| understand than the flexbox/grid/box model for UI layout.
|
| Abstra is great for companies that want to make MVPs in
| production, learn with real data and move faster. We already have
| a few companies using Abstra. One of them is Stone (Nasdaq:
| STNE), which uses us to build internal tools faster than coding
| by hand. Examples of what people have built so far include a
| customer support portal, a field sales collaborative notes app,
| financial controls, timesheets, an employee evaluation tool, and
| a student enrollment control.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Congrats on the launch. Have you tested the generated UI for
| accessibility, particularly with a screen reader? If I can try
| a finished demo app without going through the design process
| myself, I'd be happy to provide feedback.
| dlojudice wrote:
| amazing product! i'm looking forward to test it
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Great, thank you! If you have any questions or thoughts about
| our tool, you can contact me (bruno [at] abstra.app). I would
| love to get your feedback on it.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| 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?
| brunovcosta wrote:
| 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
| nirali35 wrote:
| 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?
| brunovcosta wrote:
| 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
| nirali35 wrote:
| Thanks, currently I am also using Vue and doing simple DOM
| manipulations.
|
| Any specific Vue libraries you found useful for drag-n-
| drop, alignments, connecting arrows, etc?
| mooncoffee wrote:
| This tool looks very interesting
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Thank you!
| villasv wrote:
| > 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.
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Thank you! I think there always an abstraction bias that
| makes webdev frameworks so coupled with HTML.
|
| Great to hear that you liked!
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| This looks pretty neat. Just wanted to give you a heads up that
| the word "regulamentation" might be a typo in your docs here:
|
| https://docs.abstra.app/#security-by-default
|
| Even outside of that word the paragraph itself reads kind of
| weird:
|
| "The Abstra team makes all the necessary effort to make your
| project secure and compliant with all the actual rules, good
| practices, and regulamentation."
|
| I took a stab at changing it:
|
| The Abstra team is dedicated to securing your project in
| compliance with rules, regulations and standards using industry
| best practices.
|
| Not sure if that jibes with the legal side of things but I
| think it reads better.
| samstave wrote:
| That does read better, however I like the portmanteau of
| "regulatory + documentation"== 'Regulementation'
|
| The NSA hardening docs could count as such...
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Thank you! We will change that!
| adrirb wrote:
| Wow it looks very easy to use
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Thank you!
| franciscomello wrote:
| This looks really cool.
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Thank you!!
| samstave wrote:
| Whats your email plz (put it in your profile)
| brunovcosta wrote:
| Good call! done! bruno [at] abstra.app
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