A start-up company has carved out a niche with a differentiated entry point such as "accent correction". Recently, the "English accent test" on the Chinese-Simplified Chinese Internet has suddenly become popular. The gameplay is very simple. You only need to access a specific link and follow the instructions to record an English voice. After a few seconds, you will get a result of detecting the country of the accent. (Visit URL: https://start.boldvoice.com/accent-guesser)
1Accent test, popular on the Simplified Chinese and Chinese Internet
This simple accent test game has many netizens having fun playing it.
Some people imitate Japanese or French accents in an attempt to fool AI. Some people were "irritated" because they were repeatedly identified as 100% Chinglish. They responded with strange accents or even Sichuan dialect, but unexpectedly received high praise from native speakers. Whether it is reliable or not is another matter, but the program was very effective.
Source: Xiaohongshu
Similar lively scenes also occurred on the external network. Overseas netizens with "complex compositions" rushed to let AI detect the components of their accents, and some of the detection results were surprisingly accurate. For example, the following netizen has long-term living experience in China, the United States, and South Korea. The final identification result is that he has the accents of the above three places.
This short video is owned by TikTok
More than 2 million views｜Source: TikTok
Netizens have found happiness in this game, and BoldVoice, the manufacturer behind it, has experienced gratifying growth.
BoldVoice is an American company founded in 2021. Its eponymous application BoldVoice is dedicated to helping non-native English speakers reduce their accent. Similarweb data shows that the number of visits to the BoldVoice official website in December increased by 3308% compared to the previous month, reaching 7.23 million times. On the other hand, the growth is reflected in the surge in revenue. SensorTower data shows that the monthly purchase revenue of the BoldVoice mobile application version reached US$960,000 for the first time.
12-month in-app purchase of BoldVoice mobile app version
Revenue is US$960,000｜Source: SensorTower
2Reduce accents and create a segmented language market with a potential size of tens of millions
Different from common language learning products such as Duolingo and Speak, accent improvement applications target a completely different wave of people.The latter have already completed the study of grammar and vocabulary, but are unable to express themselves confidently and fluently due to the influence of their native accent, which is an advanced requirement.The discovery of this demand stems from the personal experience of Anada Lakra, founder of BoldVoice, and she believes that this market is very broad.
BoldVoice App Store Poster
Lakra was born in Albania. When she came to Yale University as an undergraduate student, she was the first person in her family to visit the United States. She was excited about the new environment, but soon communication in English became one of the biggest obstacles.
Before coming to the United States, Lakra studied English for almost 10 years and passed all the English standardized tests required to apply for U.S. undergraduate programs. She had always been confident in her English ability, but communicating with native speakers was a severe blow to this young girl who had just arrived. Lakra found that local people always couldn't understand her words and asked her to repeat them. What's even worse is that in formal settings such as class and work, accent problems often distract people from the content, which ultimately affects her willingness and confidence to express publicly. This kind of trouble is quite common among international students and immigrants for whom English is a second language.
Reddit netizens discuss accent bias | Source: Reddit
Research shows that people may assume someone is less intelligent, less educated, or even less capable because of their accent. Specific to formal situations such as work, a study published in the "Journal of Applied Psychology" shows that accent will influence managers' perceptions of employees' language fluency, and further affect expectations of their expressive abilities, pointing to the correlation between accent and career opportunities. The research also shows that accent issues can lead to people feeling excluded and devalued at work. The accent problem affects not only students and migrant workers,Even the boss may be treated differently.
Paul Graham, founder of the well-known startup incubator YCombinator, admitted in external communications that when he considers whether to let an entrepreneur enter his project, a "strong foreign accent" is usually detrimental to the candidate. He later clarified that “the problem is not the cultural signals conveyed by accents, but that it’s more difficult to get a startup off the ground when people can’t understand you.” Accent does inevitably carry background information about the speaker's birthplace, economic class, etc. At the same time, it has a more direct impact on communication efficiency. This is exactly what Anada Lakra experienced: "the locals couldn't understand the English she spoke."
As of 2023, there are 47.8 million immigrants in the United States. The most common countries of origin are Mexico, India, China and the Philippines (Pew Research Center data). Most immigrants have varying degrees of accents because their native language is not English. Similar to Lakra, 1 million international students come to the United States every year; and as English becomes the world's main business language and the number of people going to the United States for business/work increases, more non-native English speakers will be willing to break through the "accent", the last barrier to language learning.
However, it is not easy to correct a person's pronunciation habits that have been developed for many years. The most important solution to accent problems on the market has always been to participate in real-life "accent training classes". Such courses generally charge a lot of money. Online/offline teaching, teachers with different levels of experience, pricing ranges from 50 US dollars/hour to hundreds of US dollars/hour. People without this budget can only study by themselves. This is also the path Anada Lakra chose in her early years. She is well aware of the hardships involved. So when she heard more and more news about AI and speech models in 2021, she immediately realized that she could do something to help non-native English speakers overcome accent problems.
One 1v1 accent class sells for $90 an hour
3Two non-native English speakers create an “oral gym”
After graduating from his undergraduate degree, Lakra worked at Peloton and McKinsey, and then went to Harvard Business School to study for an MBA; another Lianchuang Ilya Usorov who served as CTO was also not a native English speaker. He graduated from New York University and worked for the online business course platform Section4. BoldVoice received investment from YC not long after it started. The latest round of financing occurred in August 2023 (seed round), with the total financing reaching US$6.1 million.
BoldVoice co-founders (from left to right):
IlyaUsorov and AnadaLakra
Lakra’s understanding of pronunciation practice is,Different from vocabulary, grammar and other learning that is more focused on brain memory and understanding, pronunciation occurs in the oral cavity and is a control exercise for oral muscles., the latter pays more attention to the proper tongue placement, mouth opening and closing, etc. Therefore, BoldVoice is nicknamed the "oral gym" by the team, which also results in its teaching methods being different from conventional language learning products.
BoldVoice｜Source: BoldVoice
BoldVoice combines two teaching modes: real-person demonstration and AI pronunciation correction. Users first record their own speech and use AI scoring to find areas for improvement; then they watch a video demonstration by a Hollywood accent coach to observe and imitate authentic pronunciation methods. Although many language learning products already include pronunciation correction functions, the dedicated BoldVoice still has many differences in functional design. In addition to designing special pronunciation courses, in the free conversation section, the latter will accurately set the conversation goals to use specific words, words with the suffix "-ing" three times, etc., while completely omitting the focus on vocabulary expansion or grammar correction, and ultimately pointing to pronunciation suggestions for key words and phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation practice from sentences, words to regression phonetic symbols｜Source: BoldVoice
For a long time after BoldVoice was released, its main users were non-native speakers in the United States, a considerable number of whom should be immigrants. AppMagic data shows that since its launch, more than 70% of BoldVoice’s revenue has been contributed by American users, and more than 60% of downloads have come from the United States. However, the "English Accent Test" that became popular in December has gradually opened up BoldVoice's popularity in markets outside the United States and further exceeded the ceiling of product revenue. In that month, the revenue/download ratio in the U.S. market dropped to about 30%, and revenue in South Korea, China, Japan, and Canada all showed significant growth. In April last year, BoldVoice just announced that it had reached $1 million in ARR, and now its in-app purchase revenue in December alone is close to this figure.
BoldVoice revenue change curve from November to present｜Source: Diandian Data
So is the accent test launched by BoldVoice really accurate? A poll initiated by Twitter blogger [email protected] and involving 577 people showed that more than 70% thought the AI guessed accurately.
Source: X
Behind an accent fun test that triggered viral growth, it may be more worth thinking about how the team discovered this segmented demand and how to package "accent reduction", a demand point that may involve complex cultural and emotional factors. It can be seen that BoldVoice has never "problematically" addressed accents, emphasizing helping rather than requiring users to meet certain standards. As a language learning product in the context of globalization, this deep understanding of cultural sensitivity may be worthy of reference by manufacturers.
Reference article:
"AccentBias:HowCanWeMinimizeDiscriminationInTheWorkplace?", Forbes
"ThisMobileAppHelpsNon-NativeEnglish-SpeakersCraftAConfident, BoldVoice", Forbes
"BoldVoice:PerfectYourAccentwithanAICoach|StartupStory|Ep1", TheLobsterTalk