The Value of Conversation
Over the past 30 years, the transcription industry (transcribing speech to text) hasn’t shifted much. Heather and her co-founder Danny are trying to change that with their start-up: Spreza! They are using a subset technology of machine learning known as either deep speech or deep learning. This is essentially Artificial Intelligence, which finds patterns among a large group of data. Heather noted, this technology wouldn’t have been possible a year ago. They provide live captioning to increase accessibility for the hearing impaired, streamlined enterprise transcription and a free transcription platform you can try out here!
Heather comes from a business background, having graduated this past year from Queens University. She noted her business partner studied engineering, so they work well as a team together. She emphasized how important it is to have a good working relationship with your co-founders. She noted, she met Danny 2 years ago when they started their first business in 3D printing hardware. They took part in an incubator at Queens University and as a group of 5, they came up with that business of which 3 of them are continuing today (it’s called Mosaic Manufacturing, learn more here). Then the Next 36 Program came along and she thought that it would be a great opportunity to try something new, to bet on the value of conversation, the importance of machine learning, and the possibility of different subsets coming out of this—and to be able to help a lot of people!
Heather noted that this idea took a long time to come together, and it didn’t solidify until a few weeks ago and is always changing. She humbly noted that in terms of their program they are definitely not the most accomplished group, but she’s excited about their potential. She noted her co-founder has been studying this topic for years and is the visionary behind the technology. They initially wanted to make a system that could take notes for you because they had assumed transcription was already a solved problem. There are a lot of speech to text systems, but they aren’t that accessible for non-developers to use. She noted that many people that have been building them, haven’t been thinking about the broader ways to use them and they decided to tackle this.
Currently, they are facing a few challenges. They are in the process of deciding what their core commercialization product will be and are on a journey to prove their hypothesis of proving their technology. She also noted, a personal challenge for her is convincing herself that she is good enough to start a business. She noted that the Next 36 program has really helped with this and is thankful for the friends she has made in the program. She noted that people succeed in packs and that you should want everyone in your network to succeed because they can help you. There is also the challenge of prioritizing when you have no idea what you are doing. She noted that they have had iterations and that it is difficult to do the research when she’s putting out fires; finding the balance between long-term with things she has to get done tomorrow. She also noted you can get quite demoralized by the way some people treat and talk to you—keep going!! There are also these weird stereotypes associated with every industry and job, but she would argue that she doesn’t fit the mold for a founder most of the time.
Although they are facing a number of challenges, Heather took a lot out of her experience with Mosaic. She noted a Kickstarter for Spreza doesn’t make sense right now, but with Mosaic, they raised $230K through their campaign. She was on a study exchange, but her cofounders at the time did a really great job creating buzz and garnering a lot of interest. She noted with Kickstarter, you want to guarantee that your campaign will be a success and you want it to be successful ASAP. To do that, you need to offer things like discounts and already have a community surrounding your product. She noted 3D printer enthusiasts are early adopters of technology and they understand that this technology is still not perfect and are willing to play around with it. There are a lot of active forums, groups and specific publications like TechCrunch. Mosaic was able to build a large email list from this and they tried to get their followers to commit to purchase so they would hit their goal of 75K quickly. People are more willing to back-up a campaign if it has already been a success because they fear they will miss out.
Heather has always been inspired to make the world a better place! She noted that what has been so fascinating about starting a business is that it’s one of the more direct ways to really change things. You have the freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to think in a different way that you don’t necessarily have when you work for the government or a large organization. Her and her co-founder are making decisions by what push them the hardest and what will allow them to learn the most in the shortest period of time so they can accelerate their own personal growth along this journey. She noted it can be difficult to motivate yourself, seeking out programs, and asking for help. She noted they would consider going to the US as part of an accelerator, but cautioned that it is hard to retain your team when you go to Silicon Valley and there are tons of people working on the same thing. Canada also has a lot of tax grants and things like this to encourage new companies.
Get to know Heather a bit better!
If she wrote a book: She would write something similar to a biography under a pseudonym name and she’d be very honest. Heather would call it: I don’t know what I’m doing.
Inspiring Books: She noted Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project is a phenomenal book and taught her that people succeed in packs.
Nerdy Moments: She noted that she is the biggest nerd. She said at 6 years old she was mad at her parents for not being a prodigy. Heather also noted she played the oboe and has more medals for math than sports. She also refuses to DJ at parties because people will dislike her taste in music (and she likes to repeat the same song over and over).
Embarrassing stories: The day prior to speaking with Heather, she mentioned her demo didn’t work in front of an investor. The day prior to that she had spilled water all over herself when she met her first investor. She’s tripped on stairs in front of important people. She noted that what’s interesting is that they have been weirdly great bonding moments. At the end of the day, we are all human and we make mistakes. During her time on exchange to Brussels, she had a chance to speak to a group of Flemish investors about alternative financing. She had the PowerPoint, but hadn’t downloaded her video assuming there would be wifi. She looked into the crowd of about 80 investors and she said that since she’s moved to Europe she’s learned a lot of big life lessons, and this was one of them…Always pre-load your video. She thought they would laugh; they didn’t. Tough crowd!
When not working on Spreza: She joined the gym and does a lot of yoga. She’s also gotten into the habit of calling friends because she does a lot of walking around the city. She also likes to do new things and meet new people!
Favorite place travelled to date: She loves to travel, so she found it hard to pick one place. She did do a whirlwind road-trip through Norway though, which she note was especially beautiful.
What she wished she had known: She noted that she is her own biggest enemy and if you don’t believe in yourself, why would anyone else believe in you? She still tries to verbalize this and noted that she really struggled with this during her first business. Knowing what she knows now, if she saw someone going through what she went through, she thinks she would be able to help them a lot faster. She noted: believe in yourself! Don’t take yourself so seriously. The worst case scenario is really not that bad.
Heather has some great advice! Don’t look for the right path and be open to the best opportunities. When it comes to big life decisions, make them with intention and have a reason for your decision. There is no right or wrong decision. If it’s not working, then pivot, learn more skills, for example. For more advice from Heather, check-out her TedX presentation!
Thank you for reading this post about Heather and her new start-up Spreza! If you would like any more information or would like your speech transferred to text, please check-out their website! If you have any questions, or would like to suggest other interesting content you’d like to read about, please reach-out to me here!
