BoldVoice - Speak English more clearly and confidently
Speech and accent coaching app for non-native English speakers
I discover a new startup every week and share it with you. This week’s featured startup is BoldVoice. Subscribe to get each and every issue.
What it does: BoldVoice is a speech and accent coaching app that helps non-native English speakers speak more clearly and confidently. It combines personalized, bite-sized video lessons from Hollywood accent coaches with real-time pronunciation feedback via speech AI to create an effective and engaging learning experience.
How it started: Anada Lakra (CEO) and Ilya Usorov (CTO) built BoldVoice to solve a pain they had themselves as non-native English speakers. When Anada first moved to the US, she was often asked to repeat herself, which took a hit on her confidence. Ilya also saw his Russian-born parents struggle to be recognized and promoted at work due to their accents.
How it works: BoldVoice brings Hollywood accent coaches to your phone via
high-quality video lessons tailored to your native language. You can also speak into the app and get detailed feedback from its AI so you can keep improving your pronunciation. Here’s a demo of its functionality:
Pricing: Boldvoice costs $15 per month or $89.99 per year. Which is a fraction of what traditional 1:1 accent coach sessions usually cost in the range of $200 / hour.
Why it’s interesting: With English being the number one business language of the world, it pays off not only to learn the language, but also be able to speak it clearly. As a non-native English speaker myself, I often struggle with pronouncing some basic words on a daily basis, even though I have been working, living and breathing English for the past 11 years. This oftentimes causes embarrassing moments and annoying distractions during important meetings I have with my team. It wasn’t until I took a public speaking class by Jill Slye and was told by her to “embrace my accent” that I learned to speak more clearly and confidently, even if it is with an accent. I believe Boldvoice solves an important problem for millions of non-native English speakers to be as clear and confident in English as they can be in their native language and the $15 / month will probably be the best return on personal investment they’ll ever make. As for myself, I got a 84% score on the BoldVoice assessment, so I have some work to do…
